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TOO OLD TO CARE: Reflection on the specificities of the ageing family carers population in the EU.

Principle 18 of the European Pillar of Social Rights stresses: the right to affordable long-term care services of good quality, in particular homecare and community-based services. Since its adoption in 2017, the European Union has been looking more intensively at the topic of Long-Term Care (LTC), most notably with the adoption in 2022 of the European Care Strategy[1] and the Council Recommendation on Long-Term Care.[2]

With the Recommendation, governments across the EU have agreed to present by June 2024 the measures they have taken to reform their LTC system to achieve the transition towards high quality, affordable and accessible care that will respect the rights and needs of the persons who draw on care and support services and of the carers, formal or family carers. As EU governments take a closer look at the shortcomings of their system, the COFACE Disability Platform calls on them to stop ignoring the question of family carers. In the EU, it is estimated that 80% of the LTC is provided by informal carers.[3]

As the LTC Recommendation suggests, the first step to support these persons is to identify the family carers. In order to do so, it is crucial to realise that family carers are not a homogeneous block and consider that several factors need to be taken into account when proceeding to their identification, which then can influence what type of support is the most appropriate for their situation.

In this important time, the COFACE Disability Platform launched this thematic note to spark the debate on the diversity of family carers. While the lion’s share of family carers is currently of working age and need urgent actions to support them, including through strong work-life balance measures, around 10% of the carers are past the retirement age.[4] While the need for recognition, support and formal care and support services can be extended to all family carers, it would be wrong to assume that there can be a single formatted answer for all.

In this thematic note, the COFACE Disability Platform explores one of the dynamics that should be considered when identifying and designing support measures for family carers: the age of the carers.

Read the thematic note here.

[1] European Commission, Directorate-General for Employment and Social Affairs, European Care Strategy for caregivers and care receivers, 2022.

[2] Idem.

[3] Council of the EU, Recommendation on affordable high-quality long-term care, 2022.

[4] EIGE, A Better Work–Life Balance: Bridging the gender care gap, 2023

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 Overcoming sectoral fragmentation in supporting families with young children

Families with young children have complex necessities in the period before the start of compulsory schooling. Often, these needs cannot be reduced to educational, healthcare or caregiving demands alone. They are multifaceted and require multidisciplinary responses that span across a number of public services and agencies.

Successful fulfillment of these needs requires a joint effort of different governmental organizations to build ties and form functioning networks of cooperation over a long period of time. This comparative report aims to investigate possible responses to the multisectoral needs of households by providing an overview of the current alignment and coordination between complementary services and policy areas in four European countries (Finland, Germany, Italy, and Poland) and the Belgian region of Flanders.

This report focuses on three key cross-sectoral needs. The first is the requirement for an extensive reconciliation framework of work and family life over the early months of the child’s life, which entails coordination between parental leave frameworks and formal day-care services to ensure that when parents’ paid leave has ended, they have the opportunity to transition their child into formal childcare and education services without experiencing a gap in coverage.

Another one of these demands puts emphasis on the complementarity of ECEC services for different age groups (including day-care nurseries for the very young and preschool settings for older children) in constructing a continuous, coherent, high-quality educational and care atmosphere able to accompany children and their families in a soft, linear manner, without interruptions or traumatic changes during the essential first years of life. In examining this level of interconnection in different case study countries, this report explores how it is organised, evaluates whether there are pedagogical guidelines for both levels and scrutinises alignment between minimum qualification levels for those two workforces.

The third transversal need is for cooperation and coordination between services catering to care and support during the perinatal stage. This report conceptualises this space as a convergence point between health and social care professional domains to bring together a variety of services involved in promoting family welfare during this vital time period; endeavouring to facilitate dialogue and cooperation while placing emphasis on its complementary functions.

Nowadays, the significance of family policies is growing notably across the European Union. Following the launch of the European Pillar of Social Rights in 2017, we have witnessed an increase of initiatives concentrated on improving national parental leave laws, remedying child poverty, setting higher goals for the participation in ECEC services, as well as establishing national frameworks for long-term care and disability rights.

It is essential in this situation that family policy frameworks are not just established, but are constructed with close ties to their complementary domains, such as parental leave and formal early childhood education and care, prenatal maternal care, perinatal guidance support, parenting network groups, day-care for infants and preschool education for three-year-olds. Ultimately, this report advocates for the exchange of information across Europe regarding what is being done in other countries to realize significant advancements in the integration of these family policies.

Read the full report here.

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Assessment of the European Child Guarantee National Action Plans from the perspective of children with disabilities and their families 

More than 18 million children living in the European Union are at risk of poverty or social exclusion.[1] This represents 24.4% or 1 in 4 children in the EU. The European Child Guarantee, established through a Council Recommendation on the 14th of June 2021, is a key step in achieving the European Pillar of Social Rights target to reduce the number of children at risk of poverty and social exclusion.[2] However, this promise cannot be achieved without strong implementation at the national level. EU Member States agreed to develop National Action Plans (NAPs) outlining how they will implement this Council Recommendation up to 2030, but five National Action Plans are still missing and the submitted ones reflect different levels of commitment.

Two years after the historical adoption of this Recommendation and the promise of all EU Member States to act to lift children and their families out of poverty, COFACE Families Europe assessed the plans submitted by April 2023 from the perspective of children with disabilities and their families who experience specific barriers when accessing key services and have a more significant risk of poverty and social exclusion.[3] Children with disabilities are one of the six target groups highlighted within the Child Guarantee Recommendation. In the assessment, specific attention was paid to the following dimensions: inclusive education and school-based activities, inclusive (digital) educational tools, accessibility of key services, intersections with other policy fields or discrimination forms, involvement of children with disabilities, their families and civil society organisations, and broader measures to support families of children with disabilities.

One of COFACE’s key findings from the assessment is that children with disabilities are a clear target group in most of the National Action Plans, but sufficient data and clear definitions are still lacking. Moreover, most measures for children with disabilities are related to inclusive education, but more measures are needed in relation to access to housing, healthy nutrition, and healthcare. COFACE Families Europe and the COFACE Disability Platform have high expectations for the full implementation of the Child Guarantee and call on Member States to use a two-generation (based on the interrelated well-being of children and their caregivers) and intersectional approach which complements efforts of other EU policy and legal frameworks to design policies which are inclusive of all children and their families. We call on the European Commission to reflect this commitment in the upcoming monitoring framework on the European Child Guarantee.

Consult the full assessment here.

[1] Eurostat, 2021, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Children_at_risk_of_poverty_or_social_exclusion.

[2] Council of the European Union, Council Recommendation (EU) 2021/1004 of 14 June 2021 establishing a European Child Guarantee; European Commission, The European Pillar of Social Rights, 2017.

[3] European Disability Forum, “Increasing cost of living: Persons with disabilities hit harder”, 2022; European Disability Forum, “EDF Resolution – Prioritising persons with disabilities in the action against inflation and energy costs”, 2022; European Commission, “Feasibility study for a child guarantee – Target group discussion paper on children with disabilities”, 2020, p.15-16.

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COFACE-Disability and AIAS Monza held a 1-day European expert meeting on inclusive education in Monza (Italy) on 28th March 2023.

Taking the Italian system as a starting point for discussion with European peers, we brought together organisations of families of persons with disabilities and service providers, education professionals, persons with disabilities and their families and policy-makers from several countries to examine key actions to implement inclusive education in line with the UNCRPD and the General Comment n4.

We aimed to apply the COFACE whole-family lens to the topic of inclusive education as a way to build inclusive societies for persons with disabilities and their families:

• Education for building independent living and meaningful inclusion in society;
• Inclusive education from a life course perspective, namely inclusive education beyond compulsory education;
• Looking at the continuum of services between formal and non-formal education with an added focus on culture and sports.

This meeting supported innovation and knowledge transfer between civil society organisations, created new synergies between COFACE and COFACE Disability members and key Italian and European stakeholders, and contributed to the S.H.I.F.T. towards more inclusive education systems in Europe.

See full meeting report here

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In October 2022, COFACE and Women 4 Women Czech Republic co-hosted a  European expert meeting to explore the effectiveness of family policies to address the realities of single parent families.

Single parenthood, like any family type, is not a homogenous block and covers different realities: headed by mothers, fathers, and even by a grandparent raising their grandchildren, having one child or being a large family, being from a migrant background, having a child or parent with disabilities.

Each policy should aim for universal results by triggering a two-track way of thinking from the beginning (i.e. mixing universal measures for all families and targeted measures for families in vulnerable situations). This cannot be treated in parallel or one after the other, this universal particularism needs to be integrated in the thinking from the outset. This will allow for policies that aim to prevent and redress the situation, mobilising all levels of governance in an integrated way. In order to do that, the policy-making should be more inclusive and allow concerned families and their representative organizations to participate to their shaping, monitoring and evaluation.

The European expert meeting objectives were the following:

• Explore the reality of single parents across different EU countries, using a multi-generation lens;
• Discuss existing challenges and solutions in policy and practice;
• Review family policies to integrate and respond to diverse needs of families of today, in light of developments under the EU Child Guarantee action plans;
• Boost the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan, namely principles 2 (gender equality), 3 (equal opportunities), 9 (work-life balance) and access to childcare and support to children (11)

See full meeting report here

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From non-compliance and basic minimum standards
to ambitious reforms for modern gender-responsive family policies

The EU Work-life Balance Directive is the first legislative initiative that follows the launch of the European Pillar of Social Rights in 2017, was formally adopted two years later in 2019 and fully integrated in the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan. COFACE Families Europe expects high ambitions from the different EU institutions and national governments in the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights, as a stepping stone to develop a framework for a more social and fairer European Union. Therefore, the transposition phase of this Directive has been of paramount importance. COFACE has published an assessment of the transposition, focusing on family leaves (paternity, parental and carers’ leave) in 10 countries.

This new report presents the findings of COFACE Families Europe’s transposition assessment carried out together with national experts from 10 Member States representing a geographical and welfare mix: Belgium, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Poland and Spain. First, the report introduces the objectives of the assessment, presents the methodology, and specifies the scope of the assessment on family leaves (paternity, parental and carers). In the second part, the findings of the assessment are outlined providing a comparative analysis of the transposition in the 10 respective Member States. The third section discusses these findings in a broader social policy context, summarising the most important take-aways from the assessment. Finally, the concluding section highlights COFACE messages and priorities for future EU policy and legislation, providing recommendations in this regard.

Overall, COFACE Families Europe considers it crucial to launch a new dynamic in all Member States’ social policies by setting out new minimum standards in terms of family leaves which respect diversity of social systems and family-friendly policies at workplaces by providing flexible working arrangements for both men and women. In the light of the current challenges of economic crisis, there is further need for legislation which helps families to tackle and prevent poverty.

While COFACE Families Europe acknowledges the importance of the new social acquis of the Directive, it will continue to advocate for higher standards by using all tools available (EU, national, statistical, policy, research and more) working closely with its member organisations to monitor closely national reforms, ensuring that national family policies and systems are fully compliant with EU law. This includes both hard law like the EU Work-life Balance Directive and soft law like the EU Child Guarantee, EU Care Strategy, EU Strategy for the rights of persons with disabilities, and the EU Gender Equality Strategy – all fundamental policy frameworks to consolidate and rethink welfare systems so that families of today can be supported and resilient to different social and economic shocks.

Consult the full report here

See also the 2022 assessment of the European network of legal experts in gender equality and non-discrimination:  The transposition of the Work-Life Balance Directive in EU Member States: A long way ahead.

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In June 2022, COFACE and Pro Parents Netherlands organised an Expert meeting on gender equality, sustainability and workplace well-being.

Working families around the globe were dramatically impacted by the changes COVID-19 brought. Increasing anxieties around job security, mounting home schooling demands, and radical birth and postpartum plan shifts have taken the small safety net around families away.

We are still in the phase of covid recovery, gearing up for the next normal in work and life.

There is an opportunity to build back better and coordinate a societal shift both at home and in the workplace. We need to redefine the future of work and how we envision care and work.

How are caretaking responsibilities organised to ensure that people with care responsibilities (mostly women and or mothers, but also family members who take care of elderly relatives or relatives with disabilities) are properly represented in the workplace.

With the Sustainable Development Goals 1 (no poverty), 3 (health and well-being), 5 (gender equality) and 8 (decent work and economic growth) in mind, the objective of this European expert meeting was to create the building blocks for a caring economy by:

• connecting families, policy-makers and employers in order to collect best practices for family-friendly workplaces and create European guidelines to help employers create a culture shift;
• upscaling good practices from The Netherlands to other countries, and encourage further cross-country exchanges;
• preparing the future of work to deal with labour market challenges due to gender inequality and the lack of appropriate work life balance measures, such as female under-representation, absenteeism, loss of talent and talent shortages, mental health issues and more;
• studying solutions to improve gender equality in the labour market;
• boosting the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan, namely principles 2 (gender equality), 3 (equal opportunities) and 9 (work-life balance).

See full meeting report here 

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Using the COFACE Child Compass as a starting point, we organised a European expert meeting in Ljubljana in March 2022 focused on the features of large families and the challenges they experience in Europe today, taking stock of the situation in different countries and collecting good practices.

The reflections were based on the premise that all children must have equal opportunities and be treated equally regardless of their family settings, and modern 21^st century family support systems should be able to factor in this diversity of needs without discrimination.

This European expert meeting was held in hybrid format (offline/online) for COFACE members, local participants in Slovenia, and EU stakeholders working on similar goals.

The objectives of this expert meeting were to:

• Connect the Slovenian and European realities on families;
• Build on the findings of the 2020 COFACE expert meeting on single parent families and large families;
• Collection of information on changing patterns in large families of today, including blended and recomposed families;
• Consulting national/regional/local level of the civil society on innovative practices in supports to large families;
• Encourage knowledge transfer across EU countries on promoting the rights of families and children;
• Develop common actions and positions, to mainstream the family perspective in EU policy discussions on the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan, the EU child guarantee, the transposition of the EU Work-life balance directive, the EU Child Rights strategy and more.

See full meeting report here

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