Actionable policies for adopting high-quality integrated long-term care

Long-term Long-term care (LTC) services are intended for people who depend on help with daily living activities and who may also need permanent nursing care. Disability increases as we get older, but can be found in all age groups.

The LAUREL project aims at gathering valuable insights into regional differences of integrated long-term care (I-LTC) provision and their support solutions in Europe.

Using this intelligence, it will develop actionable policies to respond to the challenges of growing demand, economic constraints, accessibility, affordability, quality of services, shortages of members of the workforce, and systemic reforms.LAUREL will identify a set of the best innovative, integrated care solutions leading to better quality, person-centred LTC and overcoming territorial and gender inequalities in their provision.

The project has the following six sub-objectives:1) Develop a set of methods and tools for mapping and characterising I-LTC services in the EU27, covering: availability and accessibility, affordability, reliability, quality, workforce, funding, governance, autonomy and empowerment, and supporting technologies; and transversally incorporating the gender perspective and regional differences (rural/urban gap).2) Undertake a field study in EU-27 to identify the most successful innovative practices.3) Analyse the features of identified I-LTC services and context-dependent factors that provide insights into policies for the adoption/development of the best innovative practices, including supporting technologies.4) Use this analysis to carry out qualitative research in the EU27 to generate a consensus on actionable policies favouring a shift to I-LTC, by investigating the change management strategies that favour policy adoption5) Produce a white paper on I-LTC that gathers together all the findings of the project and the consensually agreed actionable policies.6) Develop a set of training courses and tools to maximise the impact of the results.