Across Europe, millions of people provide essential long-term care, but often at a significant personal cost. The sector is facing immense pressure, which has only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic in previous years. Long-term care (LTC) workers, who are predominantly women (88%), face strained working conditions. These include heavy workloads, high emotional demands, irregular hours, and exposure to adverse social behaviours, all of which pose a high risk for developing mental health problems like anxiety, depression, and burnout. This situation has led to difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff, creating shortages in a crucial and growing sector.
Informal carers, who provide nearly 80% of all care in the European Union (EU), face a similar strain. High-intensity caring often carries a “triple penalty,” with negative impacts on carers’ health, financial, and social situations. The burden associated with caregiving is a chronic stress experience, and the pandemic increased the psychological distress and health deterioration experienced by this group.
The overall goal of the WELL CARE project is to strengthen the supports available to LTC workers and informal carers for improving their resilience and mental wellbeing through care partnerships. The EU Care Strategy (2022) recognises that wellbeing is determined by the capacity of both professional and informal carers to provide good care. Therefore, our project focuses on fostering care partnerships, i.e. the coordination, integration, and mutual recognition of care activities performed by both groups.
To achieve this, we have four specific objectives:
1. To review, organise and make available evidence on how to best support the resilience and mental wellbeing of carers. We will identify and analyse 40 good practices from five EU countries and conduct 10 in-depth case studies;
2. To identify, evaluate and promote innovative solutions. We will develop 5-8 transferable "solution prototypes" and support stakeholders in implementing and testing them in Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Slovenia, and Sweden;
3. To develop and foster evidence-based recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders by analysing policy, legislative, and service frameworks at the EU and national levels;
4. To sustain a continuous process of co-design with end-users and stakeholders through national Blended Learning Networks (BLNs), ensuring our research addresses real needs.
Our project follows a clear pathway to ensure our research translates into real-world change, based on the principle that a ‘one size fits all’ approach does not work for complex challenges like carer wellbeing. Our work is built on several key pillars, including an integrated research and advocacy approach, a participatory design involving end-users at every stage, and a multilevel focus on individuals, organisations, and policy systems.
The WELL CARE project is based on an interdisciplinary approach aimed at exploiting the complementary expertise of partner organisations from research, practice, and advocacy communities, bringing together fields such as health and care sciences, nursing, psychology, sociology of health and caring, social gerontology, geography, and global studies.
