Health ministry widens disabled parking permits to foster parents and senior care centers

The Ministry of Health and Welfare said Tuesday that foster parents of children with walking difficulties and operators of senior day and night care services will be able to obtain permits for disabled parking spaces, under a revised enforcement decree approved at a Cabinet meeting.

The ministry said the change to the enforcement decree of the law on convenience facilities for people with disabilities, the elderly and pregnant women extends who may receive a guardian parking placard for spaces reserved for disabled drivers. Until now the guardian placards were limited to family members under the Civil Act, which excluded foster parents caring for disabled children because they are not relatives.

The revision adds foster parents raising children with walking difficulties to the list of eligible guardians, and allows vehicles registered to senior welfare facilities providing day and night care under the Elderly Welfare Act, and to long-term care institutions offering the same services under the Long-Term Care Insurance Act, to receive the placards. A new clause requires that a placard be taken back if it is used to park in a disabled space after a foster care arrangement has ended. The decree takes effect on the day it is promulgated.

The revision also eases some convenience-facility obligations that do not fit the nature of certain buildings. Infant changing stations will no longer be mandatory in the disabled restrooms of all senior centers and elderly medical welfare facilities, regardless of when they were built, broadening an exemption that had applied only to senior centers installed between June 1, 2024, and May 31, 2025.

"With this revision of the enforcement decree, people who have difficulty moving, such as foster children with disabilities and elderly people using day and night care services, will be able to use disabled parking spaces, and we have rationally reorganized facility installation obligations that do not fit the characteristics of the sites, reducing unnecessary burdens on the ground," said Cha Jeon-kyung, director-general of the ministry's disability policy bureau.