Research activities
Social support and long-term care
The collection and analysis of data followed a common, integrated methodological framework to carry out the following four tasks.
Task 1 – Outlining the state-of-the-art in social support and long-term care
This task first served to outline the conceptual boundaries of ‘social support and long-term care’ to be used in a EU-wide comparative approach, and then proceed by mapping – through a mix of literature review, expert interviews and internet based research – the most innovative initiatives to support dependent older people and their carers in Europe and in the world.
The involvement of users’ organisations (ie older people’s and carers’ associations) and other stakeholders was crucial to define criteria to identify the most effective practices, including solutions based on social innovations (eg new configurations of activities for the delivery of long-term care services, for instance through user-driven non-profit organisations) as well as those supported by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Duration: 8 months.
Task 2 – Analysing the role of individual life-cycle decisions in the context of public care policies
This task served mainly to integrate findings derived from a multivariate statistical analysis on the households’ supply and demand decisions on informal care and take-up of formal care services, given existing public policies. These models will incorporate a range of variables on the micro and macro level, including wages, social benefits (eg pensions, unemployment benefits), health status, living conditions and availability of different care services.
The micro data was be analysed separately from aggregated data sources (eg SHARE, EUROFAMCARE, EU-SILC), using the most relevant estimation methods (least squares, maximum likelihood, multilevel mixed-effect regressions etc), in order to evaluate different relevant hypotheses in a comparative perspective, and using meta-analysis to enlighten the prevalent outcomes in case of contrasting results.
Task 3 – Identifying main drivers of change in delivering social support and long-term care
This task was aimed at:
Identifying the most relevant key factors at organisational (or meso) and system (or macro) level to deliver sustainable, inclusive and effective social support and long-term care.
Analysing the reasons contributing or hampering the spreading and mainstreaming of social innovations in this area.
Specifying how the most relevant drivers (or framework conditions) should be designed and combined in order to ensure an active ageing approach in the context of social support and long-term care.
We achieved this by using a mix of different qualitative methodological approaches, such as expert interviews, focus groups, case studies and policy analyses. A useful conceptual framework to this purpose is represented by that provided by the INTERLINKS project (http://interlinks.euro.centre.org). Crucial stakeholders involved in this consultation were represented by service users such as older people and informal carers, experts in social support and long-term care, service providers, practitioners, producers for the ‘silver market’ and policymakers.
Task 4 – Building future scenarios
This task integrated the quantitative and qualitative analyses described above into a limited number of highly innovative and realistically implementable scenarios of social support and long-term care in EU member states.
These scenarios focused on following EU relevant targets:
The reduction of poverty risks and social exclusion caused – as a direct or indirect consequence – by the onset of long-term care needs in older family members.
The quantitative increase and qualitative growth of both employed and unpaid carers of older people, by strengthening social participation, intergenerational solidarity and employment in this area.
The improvement of health and quality of life of older people in need of care and of their caregivers.
The quality and integration of social, health and long-term care services, including a more user-centred implementation of new technologies.
The in-depth cross-analysis of the collected data and of the opinions provided by end users and experts represented the basis for building future trends and scenarios using appropriate forecasts, transition probabilities and similar tools.
This allowed us to delineate how public and private decisions can influence – with respect to social support and long-term care as well as social and technological innovation – the pursuit of social inclusion and active ageing, rather than merely building on health status and demographic indicators. And thus provided a rigorous basis for formulating relevant policy recommendations and informing policy decisions to achieve a sustainable mix of informal social support and formal long-term care services.
Links with other work packages (WPs)
The outcome of the analyses described above represented building bricks for WP1, in close cooperation with all other WPs. In particular, following WP-links were considered when addressing the targets of Task 4, which synthesises this WP’s contribution for the completion of the project’s core WP1:
The achievement of target ‘a’ (the reduction of the risks of poverty and of social exclusion) considered the analyses carried out by WP2 (economic consequences of ageing), WP4 (pension systems) and WP9 (active citizenship).
The examination of target ‘b’ (the growth of the number of both carers of dependent older people) took into account the work performed by WP3 (on employment) and WP9 (active citizenship).
The analysis of target ‘c’ (improve the health and quality of life of older people and their carers) was linked to WP5 (health and well-being).
The study of target ‘d’ (improve the quality and integration of care services), took into account the analyses performed by WP7 (built and technological environments).