Personal Household Services (PHS) cover a variety of activities designed to assist individuals and families with their daily needs. These services are crucial for enhancing personal independence, achieving a work-life balance, and improving overall quality of life. With societal shifts towards flexible, community-based support, aligned with human-rights principles, the demand for PHS has significantly increased.

In the past two years, the PERHOUSE project has focused on improving working conditions and service quality within the PHS sector across Central and Eastern European countries. This initiative, centred on enhancing industrial relations, responds to the growing demand for PHS driven by the move away from institutional support and social care. The project aims to improve service delivery by establishing workplace standards, addressing informal work practices, and integrating PHS into broader industrial frameworks.

As part of its efforts, the project has produced national reports and policy briefings for six Central and Eastern European countries, evaluating the current state of PHS and the impact of social dialogue on improving conditions for domestic workers. The latest report in this series focuses on working conditions in the PHS sector and social dialogue in Slovenia.

The personal and household services (PHS) sector in Slovenia is characterised by a diverse range of services, funding, and working conditions. This report examines three key segments of the sector: care for the elderly and persons with disabilities, childcare and household support services – home cleaning.

Challenges for the PHS Sector in Slovenia

The PHS sector in Slovenia is diverse, with services funded and provided through a variety of arrangements. The report highlighted several common challenges in the delivery of these services including:

• An established institutional care sector with a relatively less developed formal PHS sector
• A dearth of PHS services with unpaid informal carers, predominantly women, having to fill the gaps that exist.
• Low wages in the sector increasing workforce shortages.
• High levels of undeclared work and low levels of social security.

PERHOUSE Recommendations:

To enhance the PHS sector the report, as well as the project's policy briefing,  provide a number of recommendations including:

• Ensure public funding supports the provision of PHS in order to make these services affordable either on a universal basis or according to the ability to pay.
• Expand the provision of PHS organised as a public service.
• Increase trade unions’ capacity in the area of household support PHS.

To read the full Policy briefing in English, click here. To read the briefing in Slovenian, click here.

To read the full PERHOUSE report for Slovenia in English, click here. To read the report in Slovenia, click here.

Additional Resources

You can learn more about the state of play of the PHS sector in Slovenia via the PERHOUSE video here.

A comparative video discussing social dialogue in the PHS sector across Central and Eastern European countries is also available. watch the video, click here.

Click here to read all of the PERHOUSE resources, including national reports for Poland, Czechia, Estonia and North Macedonia.