Summary
On 7 September 2022, the European Commission adopted the European Care Strategy to ensure quality, affordable and accessible care services across the European Union and improve the situation for both care receivers and the people caring for them, professionally or informally. It is the first such EU level initiative on care, triggered by the need to address care-related challenges common to all EU Member States. The Strategy follows a person-centered life-cycle approach and covers childcare and long-term care. The Strategy sets out a number of supportive actions at the EU level to boost access to quality, affordable and accessible care services, improve working conditions, work-life balance, upskilling opportunities and other support for carers, step up investments in care and improve the evidence base and monitoring processes. In addition, to trigger reforms at national and sub-national levels, the Strategy is accompanied by two Recommendations for Member States (on the revision of the Barcelona targets on early childhood education and care and on access to affordable high-quality long-term care), which were adopted by the Council of the European Union on 8 December 2022. EU Member States are now looking at their national policies with relevant stakeholders to see how national policies and practices need to be changed in line with the guidance provided in the Recommendations. Regarding long-term care, the guidance covers the areas of adequacy, availability and quality of long-term care, formal and informal carers as well as long-term care policy governance.
Planning and Implementation
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What was the challenge you were trying to address?
Ageing related growing needs for long-term care in the EU in the face of shrinking human resources and pressures on public funding. More specifically, the challenges addressed relate to affordability, availability, accessibility and quality of long-term care, skills and working conditions of formal carers and support needs of informal carers.
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Who were you trying to impact?
Older people with chronic health conditions or disability, Older people with vulnerabilities, Both older and younger people
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What sectors were you targeting?
Labour, Long-term care, Social protection
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Who else was involved?
Government, Civil Society Organization, Older People's Association, Academia, Health Care, Social Care, Private Sector
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How did older people participate?
Older people were consulted during the planning process
Lessons learned
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Please describe how collaboration worked in your initiative.
In the lead up to the adoption of the European Care Strategy open and targeted consultations were held with numerous stakeholders. The governments of EU Member States were also actively involved in negotiating the text of the Council recommendation on long-term care leading to its adoption by the Council in December 2022.
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What was the impact of your initiative on older people, their families, and/or their communities?
The initiative has only been launched, too early to reply to this question. However, the initiative is expected to have a very positive impact on older people with long-term care needs and their family members, as it is designed to address their concerns in the area of long-term care.
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What issues did you face, and how did you address them?
We are still in the early stages of implementation and issues may arise later on which we are happy to reflect on.
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What lessons did you learn from implementing this initiative?
We are still in the early stages of implementation and lessons may arise later on which we are happy to reflect on.
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Do you have any other reflections you would like to share?
The initiative has been triggered by the same demographic trends and related challenges as the United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing. There are therefore important synergies. As integrated care and long-term care are also at the core of the actions rolled out by the World Health Organization, close coordination between Member States can help increase the impact of these initiatives. Therefore, one of the EU-level actions under the European Care Strategy includes a strategic partnership with the WHO to provide country-specific support to design and implement policy measures for high-quality long-term care, including through integrated care services.