Welfare commissioners cover a broad array of tasks, including regularly checking in on elderly and disabled residents, looking for signs of child abuse, providing local residents with information about services, and even helping them dispose of garbage.
Although demand for welfare commissioners is on the rise due to the graying of the population, municipalities are having a harder time finding enough of them to meet the need.
Here are basic questions and answers about what welfare commissioners do and the difficulties they have faced in recent years.