Long Term Care in Romania

The increasing life expectancy and the alarming growth in the incidence of chronic illness make long term care services in high demand and in dire need of change and innovation. As part of the ANCIEN initiative, which aims to comprise a database of European approaches for dealing with long term care, this document creates an overview of the health systems organized in Romania which target individuals with long term care needs. The method of governance, the people’s needs and the available services are presented herein. For the most part, the services provided in this field are covered through the efforts of the family of those in need and are therefore difficult to quantify or analyze. Public services are either insufficient (in terms of quality or accessibility) and the moral stigma associated to using them prevents families from making this choice. However, due to a high demand and a low supply of high quality LTC services, the private market of nursing homes has exploded in the last few years, funded either privately, through NGOs or external donations. The quality and number of available services has greatly improved but the accessibility is still low. At this moment, Romania still does not have an integrated long term care system neither from the legal or the organization of services being offered. There are social and medical services that are run, provided and legislated independently. The current national strategy is to coordinate these services and to create an integrated system with multidisciplinary teams which would include different types of medical specialists and nurses but still maintain and improve the services offered formally or informally as a home based care package

Active ageing – Enhancing digital literacies in elderly citizens

Being digital and information literate is crucial in nowadays society, although not every citizen has the necessary means and resources to achieve these skills, especially the elderly ones. Therefore it is necessary to develop ways to help them to enhance their digital and information competences. In this paper we will present an ongoing project that was designed and implemented with the goal to provide elderly citizens with the necessary skills of a networked society, contributing for an active ageing. The methods used were based on a set of hands on workshops delivered by a team of voluntary students and teacher, with the help of collaborators from a nursing home. The workshops were developed accordingly with the detected needs of a group of elderly citizens, based on the answers of an implemented questionnaire.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Weathering the Nest: Privacy Implications of Home Monitoring for the Aging American Population

The research in this paper will seek to ascertain the extent of personal data entry and collection required to enjoy at least the minimal promised benefits of distributed intelligence and monitoring in the home. Particular attention will be given to the abilities and sensitivities of the population most likely to need these devices, notably the elderly and disabled. The paper will then evaluate whether existing legal limitations on the collection, maintenance, and use of such data are applicable to devices currently in use in the home environment and whether such regulations effectively protect privacy. Finally, given appropriate policy parameters, the paper will offer proposals to effectuate reasonable and practical privacy-protective solutions for developers and consumers

Crossing Organizational Boundaries in Palliative Care: The Promise and Reality of Community Partnerships

This report presents the first of a series of findings from the Community-Oriented Palliative Care Initiative (COPCI), an innovative program testing new approaches to caring for individuals with progressive, life threatening illness. Developed and supported by the United Hospital Fund, the project was designed to initiate collaborations among health care and social service organizations, with the goal of reaching seriously ill individuals and their caregivers earlier in the course of illness and providing a broad range of coordinated services. Six such networks of diverse partners received a total of $2.1 million in grants over the two-year period from mid-2000 into 2002.The urgency to provide alternatives to current standard practice is underscored by the number of individuals affected: in New York City alone, in the year 2000, some 46,000 people died of diseases typically marked by a lengthy course from diagnosis to death. While many could have benefited from appropriate and timely palliative care services, most did not receive them.The Fund reasoned that networks including not only hospitals and hospices but also social services agencies and other community resources could collectively respond, earlier and more fully, to the complex combination of medical, social, psychological, and spiritual needs that typify the months and years leading to death. Local expertise and resources should determine the structure of each network, the partners involved, and the specific model for service delivery. Drawing on the experiences of the six pioneering projects, this report focuses on the challenges of creating such new networks

The Latino Age Wave: What Changing Ethnic Demographics Mean for the Future of Aging in the U.S.

Highlights data on aging Latinos/Hispanics, trends in the assets and needs of community-based organizations serving or that could serve older Latinos, and strategies for addressing gaps in supportive policies. Outlines best practices and recommendations

The Eldercare Dialogues: A Grassroots Strategy to Transform Long-Term Care

This report is the culmination of observations of 11 Eldercare Dialogues, 15 in-depth interviews with Dialogue organizers and participants, and six focus groups, one with each participating organization. It explores the experiences of caregivers and care recipients in the movement to transform long-term care and ensure that caregivers and recipients have the support they need to age and work with dignity. The full report includes a toolkit so other communities can learn from and replicate the Dialogue process

More and Better Jobs in Home-Care Services

[Excerpt] This study examines recruitment and retention measures in community-based care and support services for adults with disabilities and health problems. It focuses on 10 EU Member States: Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. It examines 30 case studies from these countries, analysing initiatives that were successful either in creating more jobs in the provision of health and social care for adults in the community or in improving the quality of jobs, with the aim of both attracting new recruits and retaining existing staff

The Development of Long-Term Care in Post-Socialist Member States of the EU

Long-term care (LTC) in the new EU member states, which used to belong to the former socialist countries, is not yet a legally separated sector of social security. However, the ageing dynamics are more intensive in these states than in the old EU member states. This paper analyses the process of creating an LTC sector in the context of institutional reforms of social protection systems during the transition period. The authors explain LTC’s position straddling the health and social sectors, the underdevelopment of formal LTC, and the current policies regarding the risk of LTC dependency. The paper is based mainly on the analysis of information provided by country experts in the ANCIEN project