Since 2004, an annual “wandering-senior simulation drill” has been carried out under the leadership of the Hayame-Minami Human Kindness Network. In 2006, the drill was carried out with wide-ranging cooperation from community members (about two hundred participants representing about one hundred groups), including representatives from the police and fire departments, city hall, the Association of Nursing Care Services, local welfare and child-welfare commissioners, the Taxi Association, construction firms, construction firms, and local schools.

Hayame-Minami Human Kindness Network began with a grassroots idea for building a network based on immediate neighborhood ties and a community gathering place. After a series of discussions among the community residents of Hayame-Minami School District, the network was formally launched in February 2004 as an organization through which community volunteers could act in concert.

On the day of the drill, a community member, who had taken the “dementia supporter” training course, gently guided the person playing the role of a wandering and exhausted person with dementia back to safety. In fiscal 2006, prior to the drill, a training course for “dementia supporters” was held for people in the police and fire departments, local construction firms, and so forth, helping to deepen understanding in the community.

1. Residents of Hayame-Minami district
   Today, if an individual wanders off and disappears somewhere in the city of Omuta, the Hayame-Minami Human Kindness Network notifies approximately seventy residents, shops, and other volunteers in the Hayame- Minami district, and the residents begin investigating and keeping watch in their immediate neighborhood. The system also ensures that any sighting or other information is promptly reported back. Meanwhile, the Omuta Police Department’s existing SOS Network has improved the speed and mobility of its citywide response. In this way, the wandering-senior simulation drill has yielded very positive results. The drills have helped deepen citizens’ understanding of people with dementia, encouraged them to approach and talk to any senior they find wandering, and have fostered a network in which residents look after one another.
2. The city of Omuta
   There is now a common information sheet for the entire city of Omuta, which is continually being put to use.

Each year there are approximately 120 cases of missing persons, and the network is mobilized for about 20 of those cases. Unfortunately, each year one or two such cases have ended in the death of the person. As of this writing, there have been no deaths since October last year.