Aims

EUROFAMCARE will provide a European review of the situation of family carers of elderly people in relation to the existence, familiarity, availability, use and acceptability of supporting services...

• ... and any (other) supporting measures / ideas / concepts / ...
  
• EUROFAMCARE will push a change management process at various policy levels to promote social policies towards a partnership approach between family carers, professional providers and cared-for.
  

Brief Description

Six countries (Germany (co-ordination centre), Greece, Italy, Poland, Sweden, United Kingdom) will form a trans-European group, systematically representing the different types of welfare-states in Europe. In a comparative study each of the six core countries will collect data from about 1,000 family carers and their dependent elderly family members in different regional sites. The families will be interviewed face-to-face at home using a joint family care assessment. The views of potential service providers involved will be obtained by telephone. Quantitative and qualitative data of these interviews will be entered in National Data Sets and a European data base for cross-national analysis. A typology of care settings will be developed considering examples of good practice and beneficial and obstructive circumstances.

Pan-European expertise, knowledge and background information about the support, relief and expertise of family carers recognising the variety of the different social-, health- and welfare systems in a future Europe will be achieved by reviews and expert interviews in the six project countries plus 17 further European countries.

A representative of AGE - The European Older People's Platform - as a member of the project group will conduct interviews with European decision makers to gather their views about strengths, weaknesses and opportunities in their responsibilities to support family carers.

A socio-economic evaluation on the basis of the National Surveys and the pan-European background information will calculate the economic consequences from perceived quality of life to European-wide politico-economic implications.

The last step will be a feedback research action phase based both on the study results and on the pan-European expertise. The partners will push a change management process at the level of local authorities and service providers as well as at the level of national and European policies.

For further information please visit the EUROFAMCARE-website.