Reforms In Long Term Care Policies In Europe

Over the last two decades, many changes have happened to the social welfare policies of various industrial countries. Citizens have seen their pensions, unemployment benefits, and general healthcare policies shrink as “belt tightening” measures are enforced. But in contrast, long-term care has seen a general growth in public financing, an expansion of beneficiaries, and, more generally, an attempt to define larger social responsibilities and related social rights. The aim of this book is to describe and interpret the changes introduced in long-term care policies in Western Europe. The volume argues that recent reforms have brought about an increasing convergence in LTC policies. Most of the new programs have developed a new general approach to long-term care, based on a better integration of social care and health care. The book explores increasing public support given to family care work (in the past, the family would take care of the elderly or infirm) and increasing growth and recognition of a extended social care market (by which care has shifted from a moral obligation based on family reciprocity to a paid, professional activity). A new social care arrangement has therefore been developing in Western countries, based on a new mix of family obligations, market provision, and public support. In order to understand such changes, this analysis will take into account the social and economical impact of these reforms.

Since the early 1990s, long-term care policies have undergone significant transformations across OECD countries. In some countries these changes have responded to the introduction of major policy reforms while in others, significant transformations have come about through the accumulation of incremental policy changes. The book brings together evidence from over 15 years of care reform to examine changes in long-term care systems occurring in OECD countries. It discusses and compares key changes in national policies and examines the main successes and failures of recent reforms. Finally, it suggests possible policy strategies for the future in the sector. With contributions from a wide range of experts across EECD countries, this book is essential reading for academics, researchers and policy-makers in the field of long-term care policy.

Reforming Long-term Care in Europe offers the most up-to-date analysis of the features and developments of long-term care in Europe. Each chapter focuses on a key question in the policy debate in each country and offers a description and analysis of each system. Offers the very latest analysis of long-term care reform agendas in Europe Compares countries comparatively less studied with the experiences of reform in Germany, the UK, Netherlands and Sweden Each chapter focuses on a key question in the policy debate in each country and portrays a description and analysis of each system Contributions from a wide range of European scholars for an exceptionally broad perspective

Forecasts predict that those in need of long-term care in Europe will double in the next 50 years. This book offers a full understanding of the institutional responses and mechanisms in place to finance old age and provides analysis of demand and supply factors underpinning the development of financial instruments to cover long-term care in Europe.

SHARE is an international survey designed to answer the societal challenges that face us due to rapid population ageing. How do we Europeans age? How will we do economically, socially and healthwise? How are these domains interrelated? The authors of this multidisciplinary book have taken a further big step towards answering these questions based on the recent SHARE data in order to support policies for an inclusive society.

This book provides a comprehensive overview on the long-term care systems in 12 EU member states and Norway. Focusing on the legal background and its main principles, it includes a comparative analysis which highlights the principal dissimilarities between European long term care benefits, but at the same time also a variety of features in common. It also discusses the increasingly transnational dimension of long-term as a result of migrants returning to their country of origin in old age, and the still-unsolved legal problem of entitlement to long-term care benefits in another EU-member state.

This title was first published in 2001: Employing an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to equity in long-term care, this book addresses the fact that demographic changes leading to ageing populations, financial pressures and changes in traditional support systems have brought long-term care and the redesign of care systems to the top of the European social policy agenda. Despite the importance of this issue, however, the question of equity in long-term care has until now received relatively little attention in social policy research. Rather than focusing on theories of social justice or the analysis of specific interpretations of equity, this book develops key dimensions of equity choices in a framework for systematic comparative analysis. This tool is then used to investigate long-term care policies in Europe, exploring equity choices in both the provision and the finance of long-term care. These choices are discussed comparatively with regard to the implications for the various actors and are also contrasted with basic welfare state objectives. This book represents an important addition to comparative research into several key areas of welfare and welfare state design. It explores the division of responsibilities in long-term care systems between the public and private and formal and informal sectors, the relationships between different welfare state objectives, the different types of welfare state intervention, and the principles and choices surrounding the allocation of resources and burdens.

Long-term care is an increasingly important issue in many contemporary welfare states around the globe given ageing populations. This ground-breaking book provides detailed case studies of 11 EU-member states’ welfare regimes within Europe to show how welfare states organize, structures and deliver long-term care and whether there is a social investment perspective in the delivery of long-term care. This perspective is important because the effect of demographic transitions is often used as an argument for the existence of economic pressure on welfare states and a need for either direct retrenchment or attempts to reduce welfare state spending. The book’s chapters will look specifically into how different welfare states have focussed on long-term care in recent years and what type of changes have taken place with regard to ageing populations and ambitions to curb increases in public sector spending in this area. They describe the development in long-term care for the elderly after the financial crisis and also discuss the boundaries between state and civil society in the different welfare states' approaches to the delivery of care.