Enhancing sustainable long-term care

“Recognising long-term care as a public good, as the European Care Strategy does, is one thing, but ensuring that social protection systems are developed and public services available is another.”

Tuscany Bell in “The European Care Strategy: A Chance to Ensure Inclusive Care for All?”
(FEPS-FES Policy Study, March 2023)

This lunch policy webinar was part of a series building on the policy study ‘The European Strategy: A chance to ensure inclusive care for all?‘. The “Care4Care Policy Series” offered a set of short discussions which highlighted the persisting challenges related to care policy-making. The series especially focused on policy-oriented solutions and on their interaction with other policy fields.

This final session concluded the Care4Care Policy Series by looking at a long-underexplored domain of EU action: the need to ensure affordable, high-quality long-term care. By taking leadership in this policy area, the EU may take a more proactive approach to rebalance persisting inequalities attributable to the neglect of care. Based on the understanding that the European Care Strategy should not serve as a mere endpoint but rather as the very start of the EU’s journey towards the development of solid care policies, this session namely discussed the role of social infrastructures to better value different care needs ranging from independent living to formal and informal care provision. 

Care being such a complex and multifaceted policy field, each discussion targeted a different dimension relevant to understand how the Strategy can give itself the means to ensure that care-givers and -receivers do not fall short of the EU’s fundamental values and the fulfilment of social rights.

The European Care Strategy can be seen as the very start of the EU’s journey towards developing solid and encompassing policies acknowledging the centrality of care whilst protecting and valuing all those needing or providing it.

In the policy study, the authors feed and guide the discussion by critically assessing whether the European Care Strategy can be seized as an opportunity to trigger a new approach to care that is truly inclusive and fair for all. They explore whether the EU is sufficiently equipping itself to live up to the claims that European values “can only flourish in a caring society”. On the one hand, it offers an analysis of the positive developments welcomed by the key stakeholders. On the other hand, it also serves better to understand the remaining blind spots of the Strategy. 

Among the speakers:

• Florian Sanden, Policy Coordinator, European Network on Independent Living (ENIL)
• Tuscany Bell, Policy coordinator, European Federation of Public Services Union (EPSU)
• Lisa Pelling, Head of Arena Idé (Stockholm-based think tank), Sweden
• Laeticia Thissen, Senior Policy Analyst on gender equality, FEPS

Elena Zarachenko, FEPS YAN & Doctoral Researcher (Tampere University), will moderate the debate

Watch again the policy webinars:

• Monday 5 June – Fair working conditions in childcare
• Monday 19 June – The future of care: platform work & digitalisation
• Wednesday 6 September – Care as a driver of sustainable growth
• Tuesday 10 October – Enhancing sustainable long-term care