Abordări privind îngrijirea de lungă durată a persoanelor vârstnice, în ţările Uniunii Europene Approaches on long-term care for the elderly in the European Union countries Section Studies

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the characteristics of public policies for dependent elderly people in Germany, Austria, Italy, Hungary and Portugal. The countries were selected taking into account the expertise in this field and the specifics of the socio-cultural context, so as to highlight the different solutions applied in those countries to solve certain problems related to the care of the elderly. The analysis of policies for dependents takes into account, for each country, the following: coordination of social and long-term care services; the beneficiaries and the minimum level of dependency for which it is granted, the procedure and criteria for assessing the dependency; the benefits provided (in kind and in cash); types of long-term care services providers. The analysis of this paper is based on information available in the database of the European Union - Mutual Information System on Social Protection which contains detailed and updated data on social protection systems in European countries, supplemented with information from studies, research reports conducted in within some projects financed within the Framework Program 7 of the European Commission, such as ANCIEN, MOPACT, but also public data available on the websites of the public ministries responsible with the provision of social services, as well of long-term care services for the elderly. The paper is structered as follows: the first part presents the characteristics of the policies for dependent elderly people from the selected countries, followed in the second part by a comparative analysis of the main aspects identified.