Seocho-gu in Seoul held a launch ceremony for the Seocho Welfare and Care Foundation on December 29 last year and began operations. The district announced this on the 13th. The foundation set out as its founding purpose the establishment of a "community-based, person-centered care system" in response to accelerating aging, the rise in single-person households and a deepening care gap. It is a start that comes two months before the Integrated Care Support Act takes effect in March.
The formal name of the Integrated Care Support Act is the "Act on Integrated Support for Community Care Including Medical and Long-Term Care." The name grew long because it carries the aim of tying together things that had been operating separately. When someone discharged from a hospital returns home, if home-visit treatment, long-term care, daily living support and home repairs are scattered across separate service desks, going to an institution ends up being the easiest path. That is also why the integrated care business models presented by the Ministry of Health and Welfare are home-visit medical care, linkage for discharged patients, daily living support and housing improvement.
Chapter 5 of the act places an obligation on the state and local governments to build the groundwork. Operating a consultative body, setting up a dedicated organization, identifying and providing services using community resources, and training specialized personnel are included in it. Seocho-gu's establishment of a separate foundation is one answer to the question of where to assign these provisions. The foundation takes on the role of a public-private cooperation control tower that runs through community welfare resources.
Seocho-gu is preparing a Seocho-style integrated care built around the Seoripul Care SOS specialized project and Seocho Cheongjeong Care. It is understood to be a plan whose scope runs from identifying services in the five areas of public health and medical care, health, long-term care, care and housing through to linkage. The district is also reviewing the operation of a resident volunteer corps for integrated care support, based on resident organizations and volunteer networks. An integrated care forum and a care proclamation ceremony are scheduled for early March.
A media wall and an honors wall to recognize donors have been installed in the fourth-floor lounge where the foundation is located, and the space is open to residents at all times. The launch ceremony was also held in this lounge. Sharing programs such as the operation of a donation kiosk, a relay campaign for companies, and Woosuri sponsorship for everyday giving are included together in the foundation's plans. It is a design meant to draw in local money and hands rather than leaving care as an administrative service alone.
It is a system that will be fully implemented in all local governments nationwide starting in March, but the height of the starting line differs by region. In the Ministry of Health and Welfare's survey of preparation status at basic local governments nationwide, conducted through January 2, the average across all indicators for Incheon's 10 counties and districts came to 52 percent. That is a gap of nearly 30 percentage points from the national average of 81.7 percent. In the same survey, Incheon's application and identification of eligible recipients stood at 40 percent, and linkage of region-specific services at 20 percent.
Among Incheon's 10 counties and districts, two, Bupyeong-gu and Gyeyang-gu, have completed both the groundwork and preparations for program operation. Local governments that have not secured a dedicated organization and personnel have submitted plans to complete this by March. Eight districts in Incheon took part in the Incheon city region-specific care project in 2023 and have experience operating region-tailored integrated care. Preparation is not starting from a blank sheet, but there is no time left to shift it into the form the act requires.
There were demands before the system was created. The Social Welfare Committee of the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy has called for a transition to a caring society since 2022 and proposed a community care guarantee act to the National Assembly, and in 2025 it formed a task force within its steering committee to push forward the drafting of a "Framework Act on Care." On June 15, 2022, 13 organizations including the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy launched a civic solidarity for securing the public nature of care and realizing the right to care. It is a story of work that has continued for several years to translate the right to live outside institutions into the language of law.
The establishment budget and staffing scale of the Seocho-gu foundation, and how many people the Seocho-style integrated care will cover, have not been finalized. In March, when the act takes effect, it will be possible to confirm whether the completion plans submitted by each local government have turned into actual dedicated organizations and personnel. How far the 40 percent and 20 percent that Incheon recorded in the ministry's survey rise over two months will also become clear at that time.
The door to the foundation's fourth-floor lounge is open. The character of this experiment will differ depending on whether the person walking in is a donor, a neighbor in need of care, or a family member worn down by caring for a neighbor. The forum and proclamation ceremony that Seocho-gu holds in early March will be the first point at which it can count who has come through that door.
