Active Ageing and Prevention in the Context of Long-Term Care Rethinking Concepts and Practices

This Policy Brief is based in the main on results of the FP7 project INTERLINKS as well as on a recent report on “Active Ageing” prepared by ÖPIA for the Austrian Ministry for Social Affairs and Consumer Protection.

Relating prevention with long-term care is often thought of as something contradictory. It generally provokes the question whether preventive or activating measures are still feasible or even existent for a person already in need of long-term care. Occasionally it is even considered sarcastic to speak of prevention or rehabilitation when long-term care has already entered the stage.

The introduction to this Policy Brief explores conceptual meanings of prevention and long-term care in relation to active ageing. Some general European trends and national developments in Austria concerning long-term care as well as related measures of prevention and activation for older people are outlined in the first part of the Policy Brief. The following section critically discusses general social and health policy approaches as well as practice examples in different long-term care settings in Austria. The Policy Brief concludes with a number of recommendations for prevention and active ageing policies targeted specifically for those older people with existing long-term care needs.

Keywords

• Ageing
• Long-term Care

Countries

Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Spain, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, United Kingdom