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Everyone will need care at some point in their life – be it as a child, as an adult after an accident, developing health problems or a disability, or in old age. Yet not everybody in Europe who needs it can access affordable quality care where, when and how they need and want it. This lack of affordable and quality formal care services leads to many people, especially women, needing to provide family and informal care, which is not always done by choice. This has a significant impact on their work-life balance, mental and physical health, employment and income. At the same time, the formal care sector faces troubling staffing issues, despite increasing demand for care services, due to its unattractiveness to potential workers, difficult working conditions and low pay. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the devastating impact of decades of underinvestment and budget cuts in the health and care sector and has finally placed the need to improve care provision on the EU social agenda.

The EU will soon put forward a European Care strategy, which is a key initiative this year for Social Platform and many of our member organisations. According to the European Commission, the objective of the strategy is to strengthen long-term care and early childhood education and care, as foreseen under the European Pillar of Social Rights, Europe’s compass for creating better living and working conditions across the continent.

Social Platform has its say on care

Before putting forward the strategy in early Autumn, the European Commission is gathering evidence through several public consultations, one on the European Care strategy generally as well as two others: one on the revision of the Barcelona targets on childcare provision and one on access to affordable and high-quality long-term care.

Social Platform has submitted its own contribution to the call for evidence on the European Care strategy. We put forward key messages, focused on

• Building a quality, affordable, available, and accessible care infrastructure in all Member States that provides quality care to all who need it without discrimination
• Creating the right public funding and investment conditions for care services
• Improving the working conditions in the sector
• Supporting digitalisation of care services, while tackling the digital divide and digital poverty

Each of these messages comes with a set of recommendations on how EU institutions and Member States can put them into practice. Want to read more? Check it out here!