Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-09-07-Speech-2-621"
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"en.20100907.35.2-621"2
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"Madam President, with Europe’s societies growing older over the next few decades, we need to find ways of ensuring that older people are given the quality care they need.
Progress will depend on efforts by many stakeholders. The Commission warmly welcomes the work on care issues carried out by Parliament’s Interest Groups on Ageing and on Carers and by civil society organisations such as AGE and Eurocarers.
The Commission is not planning to set up an Active Ageing Observatory, but mutual learning covering active ageing is one of the aims of the European Year for Active Ageing, for which a dedicated web site will be set up.
I also want to mention the contributions of the Grundtvig programme for adult education, the public health programme and the 2011 European Year of Volunteering.
Mrs Lynne, you rightly underlined the importance of ethical issues such as those involved in ‘do not resuscitate’ orders. While the Commission acknowledges the importance of this issue – and I fully share the moral substance of your question – we sometimes have to express ourselves in legalistic terms, and if we do that in this case, we must say that such matters are exclusively a Member State competence and that we do not have the capacity, from the viewpoint of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, to interfere with that Member State competence.
The Commission has taken a number of initiatives – including the major conference it held on 17 March 2008 – to increase knowledge of the elder abuse issue and to promote debate at EU level on how to prevent it.
In 2009, the Commission implemented a pilot project which led to the selection of two projects. One project investigates how elder abuse can be monitored through public health and long-term care systems. The second seeks to map existing policy approaches and policy frameworks in the European Union. Both projects started in December 2009 and the findings will be presented in autumn next year.
The Commission also continues to cofinance a number of actions under the Daphne programme and the public health programme.
The Commission is actively supporting work under way within the Social Protection Committee on a voluntary quality framework for social services. That framework needs to be flexible enough to apply in all the Member States at national, regional and local level and to a variety of social services.
One big sector where the framework could apply is long-term care. But delivering long-term care is not an easy task on a daily basis, and it is the sad truth that people with heavy care responsibilities often have to give up, or reduce, their hours of paid work because of these commitments. In turn, this affects their attractiveness on the labour market, their current income and their future pension rights.
Our longstanding work with the Member States on reconciling family and working life has revealed the importance of adjusting the working conditions of persons who provide informal care.
That is the goal the Member States set themselves in the objectives they agreed for healthcare and long-term care at EU level. In addition, the Council conclusions of 30 November 2009 called on the Commission to develop ‘an action plan for further activities in 2011, which will promote dignity, health and quality of life for older persons’. I am pleased that the forthcoming presidencies, including the Hungarian and Polish Presidencies, intend to take this work forward.
Establishing social services that allow for respite care and care leave, and granting specific rights to informal carers in social security schemes, in particular, as regards pension entitlement, would also help to encourage and enable more people to provide informal care.
As you suggest, poverty, access to care and longevity may be interlinked. We looked at such links in a recent communication on health inequalities. The evidence clearly confirms that differences in income, working and living conditions are reflected in the average health status at all ages.
However, we are only at the beginning in terms of policies that effectively break or modify the links between the social hierarchy and the hierarchy of health statuses.
What we are calling for is therefore more awareness and research, and more innovative policy development. In addition, we need to promote a ‘health in all policies’ approach which is a vital component of any successful strategy.
The Commission has already taken a number of initiatives to step up work on the quality of long-term care services, increase knowledge in this area and promote debate at EU level. It has long supported work on long-term care provision as part of the open method of coordination in the area of social protection.
The 2009 Joint Report on Social Protection and Social Inclusion confirmed the importance of addressing the issue of workforce shortages in the long-term care sector. Identifying and disseminating best practice is one of our main objectives. The Commission can act as a catalyst for change and can support national efforts.
A Commission staff working paper is currently being prepared on long-term care in connection with efforts to promote active, healthy and dignified ageing, and a Commission communication is scheduled for 2011.
Yesterday, the Commission adopted the proposal for designating 2012 the European Year for Active Ageing. The Year will serve as a framework for raising awareness, identifying and disseminating good practice and, more importantly, encouraging policy makers and stakeholders at all levels to facilitate active ageing.
The aim is to invite these players to commit themselves to specific actions and goals in 2011, the run-up year, so that tangible achievements can be presented during the European Year in 2012.
I want now to talk about people more concretely. You have rightly pointed out that, in most Member States, the bulk of support and care for dependent persons is provided by family and friends, and this will continue to apply over the next few decades. In all countries, women are far more likely to be carers than men. Inadequate recognition of the role of informal carers and inadequate support for their contribution can lead to risks of social exclusion.
To help remedy this situation, the Member States, together with the EU institutions, could consider moves to assess and certify caring skills, including those acquired while caring for dependent relatives, and in household management, which are activities mainly performed by women."@en1
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