Abstract
Belgian care policies have recently aligned with trends observable in all Western countries, including the increasing prioritizing of home care services over residential services and the privatization of services. As in other European countries, these changes have put a strain on families, who must find individual solutions to cope with their growing care needs. This typically results in the adoption of an individualized ‘care mix’ that combines the options at their disposal. The findings presented in this chapter, which are part of a research on elderly care in Belgium, highlight the lack of affordable public solutions to cover the care needs of Belgian families, the fragmentation of services available to elderly people and the difficulties encountered by both families and professionals active in the field.
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Notes
- 1.
The relatively high expenditure on long-term care and the extensive coverage of residential services for older people are generally associated to social-democratic welfare regimes, which are typical of Northern Europe. However, similar to Bismarckian welfare states, the total budget allocated for social protection is mainly financed by the contributions linked to employment and only partly from general taxation, a feature commonly associated to corporatist welfares (Morel, 2007; Dumont, 2017).
- 2.
Today in the Region of Brussels residential services are mainly private, with more than 78% of private for-profit elderly/nursing homes, which receive a government subsidization identical to that of public facilities (InforHomes, 2017). In the home care sector, government funding only covers non-profit organizations, through a system of accreditations granted by the French and Flemish Communitarian Commissions (COCOF, VGC and COCOM).
- 3.
In this chapter, I use the term ‘formal care sector’ to indicate all the services—private or public—that are officially recognized by the Belgian state and are thus part of the official labor market. It is used in opposition to the ‘informal care sector’, which refers to undeclared work (work carried out without a regular contract). Based on this definition, both formal and informal sector refer to paid services and exclude the unpaid care work provided by family members.
- 4.
For French-speaking beneficiaries, two different scales apply, depending on whether the accreditation is granted by the COCOF or the COCOM (for the French-speaking community), but they usually range from 0.50 to 8 euros per hour. A higher scale applies for organizations accredited by the Flemish Communitarian Community (VGC).
- 5.
According to the evaluation report 2018 of the voucher system (titres-services), less than 2% of workers are of Belgian origin. Regarding care jobs, the institutional available data does not allow to disaggregate at the level of care jobs (SPF Emploi & UNIA, 2017).
- 6.
Without going into details in the categorization of migrants, a migrant is usually defined as a person born in a country other than that of residence, while second and third generations include individuals with a migrant background (i.e. migrant parents/family) but born in the country of residence—regardless of their current nationality. Since data are not systematically collected by care services providers, in the narrative of the respondents the two categories often overlap.
- 7.
By ‘informal caregivers’ I intend paid undeclared workers, rather than informal family help.
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Giordano, C. (2021). The ‘Care Mix’ Adopted by Belgian Families and the Growing Presence of Migrant Workers in Old Age Care in Belgium. In: Horn, V., Schweppe, C., Böcker, A., Bruquetas-Callejo, M. (eds) The Global Old Age Care Industry. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2237-3_4
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