Abstract

Background: One of the main challenges facing contemporary society involves demographic changes and consequently the organisation of care for older people. It is expected that a larger share of the population will become dependent on long-term care in the future and it is therefore important to systematically develop and regulate the field of long-term care. As Slovenia is known as extremely institutionalised country regarding care for older people, special attention in last two decades has been paid to the component of community-based services that allow people to get care at home or to postpone institutionalisation of care (homes for older people). At the declarative level (i.e. different strategic documents), Slovenia is therefore endeavouring to pluralize forms of community-based care, strengthen care at home and speed up the process of deinstitutionalisation.

On the other hand, analyses performed by Social Protection Institute of the Republic of Slovenia show that implementation of the vision falls short; strategic national goals are not achieved as planned and that development of home care is almost stagnating in last decade. For example, home help as the most important and wide-spread community-based service is according to the strategic national goal (3,5 % of people 65+ till 2020) developing relatively slowly (1,7 % of people 65+ in 2016). Longitudinal national monitoring (2007-2017) also showed significant differences at the local and regional level regarding the provision and access to the services. Due to a number of reasons, but mainly geographical and financial ones, home help is not made available to a number of potential users.

Objectives: In the presentation we will identify structural factors influencing slow development of home care in Slovenia and highlight the great gap between strategic planning and its implementation.