On 20^th April, 6 European networks and many national organisations launched the Partnership for Skills in Long-Term Care (LTC) to drive up training and lifelong learning in the sector(s) involved. The headline target of the partnership is to contribute to and enable the training of at least 60% of LTC professionals every year by 2030, with a particular emphasis on digital and person-centred care skills. The Partnership will welcome new organisations willing and able to contribute to this target in the second half of 2023.

In September 2022, the EU Care Strategy highlighted the EU Commission’s willingness to “promote the establishment of a skills partnership under the Pact for Skills for the long-term care sector”.
 
Only 8 months later, the European Association of Service providers for Persons with Disabilities (EASPD), the European Ageing Network (EAN), the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), the Federation of European Social Employers, Social Services Europe (SSE), the European Association of Institutes for Vocational Training (EVBB) and many national partners have launched - today - the Partnership for Skills in Long-Term Care.
 
The ambition of this Skills Partnership in Long-Term Care is “to assess, prepare and address the LTC workforce skill needs in order to meet the current and future challenges which include; a significant increase in demand for such services, evolving expectations in terms of quality, digital transformation, ongoing and in some cases growing staff shortages, sometimes difficult working conditions and the lack of training opportunities”.

This Skills Partnership will particularly focus on two key skill sets deemed most urgent:

• Digital skills: To equip LTC professionals with the skills to make the most of the digital transition;
• Person-centred and soft skills: To equip LTC professionals with the skills to provide high quality person-centred support to those who draw on LTC services.

By re-skilling and up-skilling the LTC workforce with modern, up-to-date training and education in these two fields, this Skills Partnership will help to ensure the Long-Term Care sector can improve and extend its social impact. In doing so, it will also increase the sector’s attractiveness, tackle staff shortages, while increasing the sector’s economic impact.

The headline target of this Skills Partnership is to contribute to and enable the training of at least 60% of LTC professionals every year, paid for or provided by their employer, including on areas related to digitalisation and person-centred care by 2030; in line with the targets set by the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan. In numbers, this means at least 3.8 million LTC workers trained every year by 2030.

The Partnership will contribute to this headline target through a series of concrete initiatives (training, skills intelligence research, and other activities), as well as by expanding the partnership to a broader range of stakeholders.

Opening the launch of the Partnership, Nicolas Schmit, European Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights, welcomed the initiative as the “first training related action to come out of the EU Care Strategy. (…) One of the points in the Council Recommendation on access to affordable high-quality long-term care, which was agreed last December, invites Member States to address LTC workers skill needs. This means improving both initial and continuous education and training, as well as building career pathways in the LTC sector. This is where the Pact Partnership we are launching today comes in. (…) I salute your objective to facilitate the training of at least 60% of LTC pros every year by 2030. (…) I wish your partnership a lot of success.”

The President of EASPD, Jim Crowe added that “When done right, quality care and support enables people to live independently, in the community, to make choices and to have control over their lives. For EASPD, this is what the Skills Partnership is all about: creating concrete solutions to improve the quality of care & support, whilst also improving the attractiveness of jobs in the sector. We count on our partners and fellow long-term care stakeholders, including the European Commission, to help us deliver this in practice in the months and years to come. We need to drive-up skills in long-term care”.

In the months to come, the Partnership for Skills in LTC will initiate concrete actions in order to turn promising words into concrete solutions.

Supporting Documents

• Partnership for Skills
• EU Care Strategy

For more information, please contact:
Thomas Bignal, Head of Policy 

Note to editors:

The European Association of Service providers for Persons with Disabilities is a non-profit European umbrella organisation, established in 1996, and currently representing over 20,000 social and health services for persons with disabilities. EASPD advocates effective and high-quality disability-related services in the field of education, employment and individualised support, in line with the UN CRPD principles, which could bring benefits not only to persons with disabilities, but to society as a whole.