Seoul’s ‘Counseling Mentoring’ Program Analysis and Study on Improvement Plans for Seoul’s Single-person Household Policy

Perhaps the biggest change that has occurred in Korean society recently is the increase in single-person households.In line with the trend of increasing single-person households, the Seoul Metropolitan Government has introduced and is carrying out a counseling mentoring program for single-person households from 2021.However, the discussion on the effectiveness of this program has not yet been fully conducted. Accordingly, in this study, telephone and written interviews were conducted centering on practitioners conducting counseling mentoring, and based on the contents, the program was analyzed and limitations and improvement plans were proposed from various angles. The study was conducted from late October to mid-November 2022 with an FGI interview with a person in charge who runs a single-person household counseling mentoring program. Ten Metropolitan boroughs were selected by adding 7 administrative officers who operated the counseling mentoring program and 3 administrative officers who did not operate counseling mentoring. If a counseling program for emotional support is introduced in a residential space using social housing, one of the housing services for single-person households, it is expected that community activities to be formed in social housing can be supported, and at the same time, intimacy with the current area and residential space will increase, leading to a sense of psychological stability. This study is meaningful as it proposes a highly effective counseling program tailored to the characteristics of Seoul.