The Council recommendation on long-term care, adopted in 2022, urges Member States to increase the quality, accessibility, and affordability of long-term care, improve the working conditions of formal carers, better support informal carers, and develop social protection for long-term care. Having supported the European Care Strategy since its inception we call on the new European Commission to incorporate all ambitions of the Care Strategy into its planning for the current mandate. Our alliance makes recommendations on strengthening prevention, assisting Member States to provide care services through the European Semester and public spending rules, support the development of high-quality support services and measures for informal carers, support care service provides in delivering rights-based, high-quality, accessible and affordable care, revise the directives on public procurement to ensure that price alone is not decisive about who gets to deliver care services, investigate and prevent the causes of abuse and neglect in care settings, address workforce shortages and improve working conditions, increase up-skilling and re-skilling of the long-term care workforce, address undeclared work and exploitation in care, tackle financial speculation and recognise the importance of different care and support services.
Read the statement here.
