Lex localis - Journal of Local Self-Government_11(1)_January

496 L EX LOCALIS - J OURNAL OF L OCAL S ELF -G OVERNMENT V Hlebec: Family Care Experience in a Decentralized Social Home Care Context 1 Introduction The rapidly ageing population in Europe places the organization of care for older people in the research spotlight. In Europe the share of the population aged 80 and over, which is most likely to need care, will rise from 5% (2013) to 12% (2060), while the share of those aged 20-64 will decline greatly (from 61% to 51%) (The 2015 Ageing Report: 13). The increasing demand for care combined with the diminishing pool of potential informal carers may create a greater pressure on informal carers, as the majority of the older people want to age in their own homes and maintain independency for as long as possible (Kavčič et al., 2012). Similarly, there may be an increased demand for the formal services provided in old people’s homes or in the community. For the older people living at home, informal and formal care provided within the community are of vital importance as they enable ageing in place for those older people in need of care. European countries differ greatly as to how they finance and organize care for the older people (Colombo et al., 2011; Gennet et al., 2012), varying from strongly centralized with universal access to services to fragmented long-term care systems with means tested access to services. Particular structures of the long-term care system and the provision of home care within the community represent a broader context within which care is provided. Both shape the care experience for care recipients as well as for their informal carers (e.g. Andersen and Newman, 2005; Groenou and Boer, 2016). The provision of the formal long-term system in Slovenia is highly decentralized and fragmented (Colombo et al., 2011; Nagode et al., 2014), with high end users costs, and difficult access to formal long-term care services (Anderson, 2012: 128). Moreover, the organization and financing of social home care (Gennet et al., 2012), which is an essential part of the formal long-term care service within the community, is held on the level of municipalities (Smolej et al., 2008). The eligibility of social home care depends on the permanent residence of the care recipient, which creates a variability in the temporal and financial accessibility to home care across municipalities. The amount the users need to pay is set by the municipality. Consequently, users residing in different municipalities pay different fees for the same service, sometimes even when this service is provided by the same social home carer. In 2014 social home care in the 210 municipalities was provided by different types of providers, such as centres for social work (33), nursing homes (21) or specialized providers of social home care (19) - most of which were private providers with concession (17) (Lebar et al., 2014: 20–23). Some social home care providers offer services to users in several municipalities, e.g. the centre for social work in Ptuj provides social home care for 15 municipalities (Lebar et al., 2014: 18). Therefore, we could define the Slovenian social service model in the area of elderly care (see Hoffman, 2012, for a classification that lacks the Slovenian case) as a settlement based care model with voluntary inter-municipal associations. Over the past 10 years, we have witnessed a clear shift from the provision of the service from centres for social work to nursing homes and private providers with concessions. The recent trends in the