Newsletter January/February 2019

In this Newsletter

How will FUTURE inequalities on health and care evolve across GENerations?

Start of project on posting of third country nationals

Ministers of Health and Labour to jointly tackle long-term care in the Republic of North Macedonia

Local capacity building in Kosovo across divides

A stronger economy for stronger societies

What drives choices of older users of care in England

Rights-based approach to care and support for older persons

New professional roles in integrated care delivery

POOSH comparative report on occupational safety and health of posted workers in nine EU countries

Russian versus European welfare attitudes

Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals for people with disabilities in Austria

Taking stock of EU action in the area of long-term care

SDG multi-stakeholder workshops in Austria

For an inclusive future of work: What can the ESF do?

Projects

New project on FUTURE inequalities on health and care across GENerations

The European Centre will coordinate a new project on evolving inequalities on care and health across generations. This is a 3-year project funded by the GENDER-ERA Net in which we will have the pleasure of working together with Queen’s University from Canada and the Karolinska Institutet from Sweden. Older adults’ health (e.g. healthy life expectancy) and care-giving/receiving are two clear examples of existing inequalities between men and women. FUTUREGEN aims to understand how entwined GENder inequalities in health and care-giving/receiving evolve across GENerations in connection with cultural and social contexts and individual realities, and how identified sex/gender inequalities may evolve in the FUTURE.

Project Start: Posting of third country nationals

The Con3Post project is set up to explore the growing phenomenon of recruitment and posting of third country nationals (TCN), most notably from the Western Balkans, non-EU Eastern Europe and North African regions, to work as posted workers in the EU construction sector. Experts and key stakeholders from seven carefully selected EU Member States that represent a mix of TCN sending (Slovenia, Poland, Italy) and receiving countries (Austria, Finland, Belgium, Estonia) are brought together to establish transnational cooperation, share information and conduct empirical research to outline current challenges, future scenarios and possible strategic responses to the far-reaching yet largely unexplored consequences/implications of this persistent trend.

Bridge Building

Ministers of Health and Labour to jointly tackle long-term care in the Republic of North Macedonia

The Ministers of the FYROM, Venko Filipce, Minister of Health, Mila Carovska, Minister of Labour and Social Policy as well as Harald Fugger, the Austrian Attaché of Labour, Social Affairs, Health and Consumer Protection addressed the need to develop integrated services for health and long-term care at the workshop in Skopje on 5 February 2019. Kai Leichsenring, Anette Scopetta and Rahel Kahlert from the European Centre showcased possible approaches and tools for technical assistance in long-term care interventions and labour market policy. Minister Filipce thanked the Austrian Ministry and the European Centre for the successful cooperation so far.

This Bridging Function is expected to continue in the future with the belief that the European Centre's expert assistance will jointly help implement new projects and initiatives for integrated services in several sectors.

Local capacity building in Kosovo across divides

Key municipal and NGO stakeholders participated in 5 workshops across all regions in Kosovo to develop local action plans for improved social service delivery. This effort is part of the EU-funded project Support for better social services for the most vulnerable groups in Kosovo, which is led by Save the Children Kosovo in partnership with the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research. On 19 December 2018, the workshop in the North included stakeholders from both Serbian-majority North Mitrovica and Albanian-majority South Mitrovica.

A stronger economy for stronger societies

Launched in 2009 as a joint policy initiative, the Eastern Partnership aims to deepen relations between the European Unian, its Member States and six Eastern European neighbours: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. In the context of the Austrian EU Presidency, the 2018 Annual Conference of the Eastern Partnership was held in Vienna on 7 December 2018. The European Centre with its bridging function and its focus on potential Accession countries in Eastern Europe got involved in this event, with Kai Leichsenring as a moderator of a session on 'Investing in our future: how to foster youth employment and employability?'.

Publications

Article on what drives choices of older users of care in England

User choice in care for older people has assumed that care is like any other commodity; which is in contrast with the strong relational component that is part of care – i.e. caring relationships. Ricardo Rodrigues has just published an article that aims to understand how caring relationships impact the decisions of older users of cash-for-care and their perceived satisfaction. The study used semi-structured qualitative interviews with 24 Direct Payments (DPs) older users, including proxies, in three Local Authorities in the Greater London area. Decisions on and perceived satisfaction with care were both influenced by caring relationships. All users recognized that caring relationships can have instrumental value in improving care delivery or allowing greater leeway in negotiating tasks. Many users placed intrinsic value on continuity of care and the development of close caring relationships and clearly favored employing PAs. The latter involved higher levels of uncertainty, emotional investment and reciprocal gift exchanges. Agencies were often chosen due to users’ preference for more detached caring relationships. The findings confirm that caring relationships involving reciprocal emotional investment are an important outcome of care, with salient implications for user behavior. The article is available for free here

Rights-based approach to care and support for older persons

This policy brief presents the authors’ conceptual framework for a rights-based approach to long-term care and support. The framework lays out ten main human rights domains relevant to persons with care and supports needs, and provides an in-depth description of the substantive rights that each of these ten main domains should include.

New professional roles in integrated care delivery

Over the past decade, it has become apparent that primary care professionals must take on new roles and acquire new skills in order to tackle the challenges presented by the increase in the number of patients with chronic diseases and multimorbidity, and the associated need for coordinating services. In a new article published in the WHO Public Health Panorama, Stefania Ilinca, Kai Leichsenring and Ricardo Rodrigues argue that the development of integration around primary care depends crucially on the creation of an integrated health and social care workforce. One which will have to draw both on the emergence of new professional profiles and on cultivating new roles for well-established primary care professions.

POOSH comparative report

A comparative study of the occupational safety and health (OSH) conditions of posted workers in nine EU countries. The authors looked into the way OSH regulation is applied to posted workers and their experiences with OSH-related issues, and at the legal and institutional framework on posting and OSH, cross-border communication and exchange, the mechanisms for grievances at different levels, the vulnerabilities of posted workers and language barriers.

Russian versus European welfare attitudes: Evidence from round 8 of the European Social Survey

The new report of the PAWCER project presents welfare attitudes in Russia and the European countries. It covers public support for changes in social protection systems as well as in current social policies. The vulnerable groups include: the poor and concern about income redistribution, the unemployed and unemployment benefits, the elderly and public pensions, working parents and childcare, as well as migrants and accessibility to social rights.

Events

SDGs and people with disabilities

The Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, Health and Consumer Protection (BMASGK), the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research (European Centre) and the Johannes Kepler University (JKU) Linz are jointly organising a multi stakeholder workshop on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for people with disabilities.

The workshop took place on 27 March 2019 at the JKU in Linz and was the first of five events organised as part of the ‘Leaving no one behind’ series of multi-stakeholder workshops organised jointly by the BMASGK and the European Centre. The series serves to engage stakeholders at the national, regional and local level.

Taking stock of EU action in the area of long-term care

The European Centre and ICF Mutual Learning Services are organising a series of five workshops about challenges and potential solutions in the area of long-term care (LTC) from an EU perspective. The first workshop took place on 29 January and served to take stock of EU action in the area of LTC over the past decade. Invited experts represented research, provider and user organisations, unions and other policy-makers from within the European Commission. Kai Leichsenring wrote and presented the thematic background paper for this event. Discussions focused on strengths and weaknesses of EU action in LTC. Furthermore, future opportunities to guide and monitor improvement were developed in the context of the European Pillar of Social Rights and the implementation of Principle 18 that stipulates “the right to affordable long-term care services of good quality, in particular home-care and community-based services”.

‘Leaving no one behind’

The implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is discussed with various stakeholders form the public, the private and the civil society sector during five multi-stakeholder workshops. Each one-day lasting workshop focusses on a specific topic relevant for achieving the SDGs. The workshops take place in different Austrian cities (e.g. Linz, Vienna, Graz, etc.) during 2019 and 2020. The first workshop on the implementation of the SDGs in the field of disabilities takes place in Linz, on 27 March 2019. The European Centre is co-organising the workshops together with the Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, Health and Consumer Protection and other partners working in the respective SDG areas.

The Future of Work

The future European labour market will look very different from the one we know today. Digitalisation, automation and artificial intelligence are producing rapid changes in the way products and services are developed and delivered. What can be the role of the European Social Fund (ESF) in this context?

The joint network event gathered approx. 80 experts of EU-Member States at BIP/Brussels on 11 December 2018 to explore how the ESF can support Member States to design and implement programmes that adequately address the challenges and opportunities related to the future of work, with a specific focus on the most vulnerable EU population.

The European Centre, represented by Anette Scoppetta, was initiator of this event in the frame of the project 'Thematic network employment - ESF Transnational cooperation' together with the Transnational Network of Partnerships and the Transnational Network of Learning & Skills.