Bernhard Weicht, University of Innsbruck, Austria

Multiple voices call for developing integrated, empowering and inclusive LTC policies and interventions to secure the right to affordable and good quality LTC services for all persons, as stated in Principle 18 of the European Pillar of Social Rights. The recent EU Care Strategy establishes furthermore the aim that high-quality care services should benefit the wellbeing, health and social inclusion of people in need of care and in/formal caregivers, while providing good employment opportunities and making the care system more efficient and sustainable through increased fiscal revenues and social contributions.

These aims and principles are fostering new debates within national LTC systems with ideas travelling and practices diffusing in search of promising ways to tackle the main challenges while safeguarding and promoting fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens. Yet, the formulation of EU policies and guidelines is broad and might be open to diverse interpretations and definitions of LTC-related rights.

Diversity of trajectories and timing of policy developments are likely to amend otherwise consensually agreed terms and ideas. This can be challenging for meeting policy goals under a common EU strategy.

In this symposium, we start from the polysemic nature of policy ideas and terms and discuss the meanings of taken-for-granted LTC concepts that frame how different stakeholders deal with LTC challenges. We take a comparative, cross-national approach and investigate how these variations and differentiations might relate to the European Pillar of Social Rights. The proposed symposia will share work developed by the Horizon Europe Consortium LeTs-Care – Learning from Long-Term care practices for the EU Care strategy – and present the results of research carried out in seven countries (Italy, Denmark, The Netherlands, Austria, Lithuania, Portugal and Spain) on five different thematic areas related to meanings of needs and quality of care, care work and quality of care work, (in)equalities in LTC, and sustainability of LTC. The symposium will gather five presentations, each tackling one of the afore- mentioned thematic areas of meanings. Research findings are based on extensive literature reviews, policy analyses and interviews with key-stakeholders held in all seven countries, following a common methodological framework. The discussion will not only highlight the relevance of understanding what ideas mean for different stakeholders and in different contexts, but it will also reflect on how different meanings involve different levels of integration of a human-rights based approach to LTC provision.

Papers: 

• “’Good care’ and good care jobs. A comparison of 7 EU countries, Kristine Krause and Jeanette Pols, University of Amsterdam,  Barbara Da Roit, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice,
• “Priorities in LTC needs assessment in different European countries”, Virginija Posküte, ISM University of Management and Economics,
• “Human rights and the sustainability of LTC: an analysis of (conflictive) meanings and challenges in seven EU countries”, Roberta Perna, Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior deIinvestigaciones Cientificas (CSIC),
• “Inequalities in LTC in seven EU countries: does human rights’ approach make a difference? Alexandra Lopes, University of Porto.

Discussant:

Bent Greve, Roskilde University, Denmark