Seminar of the Key Theme: The State as a Producer of Public Policies

Sciences Po, Via Zoo, Compulsory Registration

Although a process of relative convergence of long-term care (LTC) policies has been identified within EU countries over the last two decades, countries continue to differ in the intensity of the protection, the allocation of responsibilities in this policy area, and more fundamentally in the mechanisms they use to address the LTC needs of their populations. Thus, the balancing of services (role of traditional nursing homes, special housing, and community care) and responsibilities (division of functions between the public and private sectors), together with the degree of decentralisation of responsibilities (role of central, regional and local administrations within the public sector), and the most adequate level of institutionalisation of older age populations (care homes vs. home care) constitute key differentiating characteristics of each LTC regime.

The political, technical and administrative management of the health and social care crisis caused by the Covid-19 epidemic proved key in the expansion of the disease, its containment, as well as in its eventual elimination in Europe. In this seminar we will review the main results of a comparative study of the main policy measures adopted to address the impact of the pandemic on the residential care sector for old people in the countries of the EU-15, analyzing a series of key dimensions:

• The trajectories, recent reforms, performance, debates, and ability to respond to the Covid-19 epidemic within the residential care sector for older groups of the population.
• The specific impact of the crisis on the residential care sector.
• The main public policy initiatives adopted in the residential sector in each country during the different stages of the crisis.
• Evaluation of these measures, lessons to be learned, and possible implications of these events for the future of the different LTC regimes in Europe.

Speaker

Francisco Javier Moreno-Fuentes is Senior Researcher at the Spanish National Research Council (IPP-CSIC). BA in Sociology from the Universidad Complutense, Master in Social Sciences from the Juan March Institute, MSc in Social Policy from the LSE, and PhD in Political Science from the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid. Between July 2018 and September 2019 he was Deputy Director of the Spanish High Commissionate against child poverty.
He has been a member of the European Social Policy Network (ESPN) of independent experts on social  protection and inclusion of the Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion of the European Commission between 2014 and 2018, and since January 2020. He held visiting positions at international institutions (Harvard, Sciences Po, Paris), and taught at both graduate and undergraduate levels (Universitat de Barcelona, CEPEL-Université de Montpellier, Universitat Pompeu Fabra). He was Visiting Scholar at the CEE, Sciences Po in March and April 2021.

Collective discussion

*Key Theme: The State as a Producer of Public Policies

Contact: Charlotte.Halpern@sciencespo.fr 

Compulsory Registration

Picture: @Tommy Larey_shutterstock