Long-term Care is a Public Responsibility
The state is of vital importance for a functioning long-term care system. The needs of people who require long-term care, especially if they are socially deprived, are met better by those countries, in which families do not have to take on care for their relatives all by themselves. This is one of the results recently published by the EU-research network SHARE, which is being coordinated by the sociopolitical Department of the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy. State-supported care systems can relieve families, who are in turn able to look after their relatives’ social needs. In this way, families living in countries with well-established care systems continue to make a significant, complementary contribution to long-term care.