Newsletter May 2020

COVID-19 emergency: We continue our research activities from home

Due to the COVID-19 measures many of our staff are currently working from home and can be reached by e-mail or phone. We continue our research activities and will be happy to respond to any queries.

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Highlight

Early findings at FutureGEN Sounding Board Meeting

The Sounding Board of FutureGEN met on 13 May to discuss early findings of the project with the project partners and the project team at the European Centre (Ricardo Rodrigues, Stefania Ilinca, Eszter Zólyomi and Selma Kadi). The SB brings together representatives from Eurocarers, OECD, WHO Europe, national governments and academics. The early findings include:

  • The first cohort analysis for limitations with Activities of Daily Living for older women and men in Europe;
  • the effect of widowhood on access to long-term care; and best methods to analyze the intersectionality of gender and social location in health outcomes.
  • We also had the opportunity to present the draft Data Navigator with data on trends in inequalities in health and care.

Further information can be found here and soon also on the project’s website.

Research in the time of COVID-19

Unnecessary victims: Older persons in the COVID-19 pandemic

At first glance, there is a solid ground for singling out older people during the current pandemic as a special group: the mortality related to COVID-19 is increasing with the age and for those 80 and above years old it is five times the global average based on WHO data. About 95 per cent of those who have died from COVID-19 in Europe were over 60 years, and more than half of them were over 80 years. This tragic statistics has prompted governments to focus their anti-epidemic measures on older persons by often demanding their self-isolation for the period beyond the terms set for younger population.

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New update on COVID-19: Comprehensive country report on long-term care in Austria

Kai Leichsenring and Andrea E. Schmidt with colleagues from the Chamber of Labour and LSE have compiled a comprehensive updated report about developments in the long-term care sector since the outbreak of the COVID-19 more

Bridge Building in the Spotlight

Feasibility study on reforming child care systems

The Feasibility Study will provide a comprehensive analysis of the current child protection policies in Albania, Armenia, Belarus, North Macedonia and Ukraine and will evaluate to what extent a new SOS Children's Villages Worldwide regional programme will contribute to the fulfilment of human rights of children in the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe. The Feasibility Study will focus on children living in formal care (residential and alternatives to residential care), children temporarily separated from their parents, as well as children at risk of being separated from their parents.

November 2021 issue

We would like to introduce the November 2021 issue of the EESPN newsletter. We feature new projects, calls & publications on new social policy measures relevant to the Bridge Building (BB) region. Read more here

Publications

New publication: EU Access City Award Network meeting 2019: summary published

On 20 September 2019, representatives from 17 winning cities of the Access City Award (ACA) met in Breda, The Netherlands, to exchange best practices and provide mutual inspiration on accessible tourism and better inclusion for persons more