The mission of Kanagawa University of Human Services is to cultivate highly capable professionals with practical skills based on the human services ideal. To achieve its mission, the university aims to offer high-quality training to prepare professionals for work in the fields of health, medical care, and social welfare, while also providing a comprehensive range of education options to those already working in these fields. Put simply, human services is an ideal that calls on practitioners to demonstrate human compassion in supporting others, treating each person as a valued individual with their own personal identity and helping individuals to live their lives purposefully and in a manner true to themselves. The aim is to support everybody without exception, whatever their personal circumstances.

When we realize human services, it is important for the specialized fields of health, medical care, and social welfare to perform optimally, while the barriers separating the three fields need to be lowered to promote collaboration and greater integration of services. To that end, we need to cultivate professionals who combine the fundamental character strengths of strong moral values, tolerance of human diversity, and awareness of human rights with profound insight and the sensitivity required to engage with people’s pain and sadness.

During the 20th century, science made huge strides, enabling us to enjoy the benefits of convenient, affluent lives. But these huge strides and the scientific specialization that accompanied them meant that the various problems that affect humans came to be analyzed in terms of specific aspects of the individual, and correspondingly less attention was paid to understanding humans in their entirety. While each of the individual aspects was analyzed correctly, therefore, increasingly often these parts did not function properly when combined as a whole. In contemporary society, where people’s values and lifestyles demonstrate greater diversity and complexity than ever before, this paradox is becoming steadily more apparent.

Kanagawa University of Human Services was founded at the beginning of the 21st century. Its purpose is to address how we can help everybody to enjoy healthy, happy lives. Perhaps you want to take your own life in a new direction? If so, come and exchange knowledge with us and learn in depth about all aspects of people and society, as well as the specialist fields of nursing, nutrition, social welfare, and rehabilitation, and how and why they should join forces to put human services into practice.