Italian Elder Care Essay

Eldercare policies and system in Italy
Introduction Throughout Europe and the Western countries the population is aging, so demand for developed eldercare policies and services is getting higher and higher as well. The model of Italian care system has historically been underfunded and has traditionallyreliedalmostentirely on informal care provided by the family. More recently, migrant workers have also become informal care providers (Gori, 2012). But now this traditional configuration of Italian eldercare system is facing ever growing pressure to make changes and adjust itself to the new situation. The system that consists of limited development of social services

Instead, “this has given rise to ahybridcombinationof informal care and the development of loosely regulated and little supported care market’’ (Da Roit, B. & Sabatinelli, S., 2013). Eldercare services have not developed the way they were anticipated to develop by the experts, rather the system has become even more cash-oriented. (Gori, 2012.) The purpose of this paper is to research more thoroughly the Italian eldercare policy system and take a look at the implications of the care policy model. The target is to answer the questions about the regulation and funding of the model, provision of formal and informal care and the overall division of responsibilities between the family and thestate.Wealsotakealook at the implications of the care policy model concerning well-being, social inequalities, gender equality, intergenerational relations and the labour market. In the last part of this paper we will also make some comparison to the eldercare systems of UK,France,Netherlands,Germanyand Denmark,

All the Funds that the Italian Health System, Municipalities and INPS provide, come from general taxation (Tediosi, F. & Gabriele, S. 2010).Thefundingofthewholeeldercaresystemin Italy has traditionally been low and underfunded. The system relies mostly on cash benefits, which are often used to buy the care from the private market. Forexample,in2009“Thepublic resources devoted to the companion payment (0.56% of GDP) were equivalent to the overall expenditure forservicesinkind(0.25%ofGDPforhome-careservicesand0.31%forresidential services, equalling 0.56% of GDP)’’(Ragioneria Generale dello Stato, 2010). This underlines how cash benefit oriented the system is. It is also worth mentioning that in 2009 the private resources spent by families to employ migrant care workers were estimated to be more than double the total amount of public resources devoted to home services (Gori, 2012). This underlines the fact that