The model of long-term care in transition: the articulation of community programs in the public welfare system after Covid-19

Funding Entity: Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation

Duration: 1 September 2021-30 August 2024

Principal Investigator: Raquel Martínez Buján and Magdalena Díaz Gorfinkiel

Summary:

The objective of the present coordinated project lies in the study of the current model of care for elderly and dependent people, visualizing its consequences, limitations and contradictions while offering new formulas from which to configure mechanisms that encourage interdependence and mutual care. The health emergency generated by the COVID19 has revealed the fragility of the current social organization of care, reflecting, therefore, the need to reflect on alternative models of care and to offer options for its reorganization. To achieve this goal, an intersectional perspective will be adopted, i.e., the exploration of diverse social inequalities such as those related to social class, gender or ethnicity will be incorporated into the analysis. It is based on the premise that the achievement of a new model of care must promote a socially fair distribution, and to this end, the reduction of inequalities in access to care resources, the promotion of men’s co-responsibility in the provision of care and the reduction of racialization and the precariousness of working conditions in the sector must be emphasized. In short, the planning of new models must have an impact on the reformulation of the coordinates under which the distribution of care is framed between public administrations, households, the market and the community.

This project focuses on analyzing the possibilities of the community sphere in the promotion of a care model that promotes the democratization and balanced redistribution of care provision. The ultimate goal is to detect the possibilities of turning the community into an agency from which to launch new care alternatives linked to local realities and promoted through its connection with the public welfare spheres. This analytical approach is anchored both in the prolific conceptual development around the idea of the commons and commonfare and in the recent cooperative experiences developed in various municipalities in Spain. The current economic, social and health crisis has left clear signs of the emergence of the community in the provision of care, depending on the exhaustion of the responses of conventional social services to the new risks of society as well as the limits of public programs to respond dynamically to these demands.

This subproject, therefore, proposes to analyze the potential of community networks and dynamics to articulate themselves as a vector sphere and articulated with the other spheres of care that guarantees the provision of quality care and the sustainability of life in an uncertain post-crisis and social transition scenario.

Research team:

Paloma Moré, Félix Arrieta, Bakarne Etxeberría, Martín Zúñiga, Matxalen Legarreta, Marina Sagastizabal, Begoña Elizalde, Cristina García, Christel Keller, Daniel Prieto, Elin Peterson.