[28. 3. 2012] Today, the Federal Government will discuss the recent draft law on the reform of care. The reform shall come into force on 1 January 2013. The main topics of the proposals are better services for persons with dementia and their care-giving relatives as well as the future financing of the care insurance. From the perspective of the AGF, the measures mentioned in the draft law are not sufficient for helping families taking care for their dependents.
Therefore, the Family organisations combined in the AGF have developed a common position on the future of care. Families confronted with care obligations face special challenges. They assume responsibility for their dependants in need of care and wish to provide them with good maintenance and care. This is pursued through various means and methods, such as: caring for the dependent alone or with professional support at home, or caring for the person that lives in a nursing home. In this situation families need reliable and systematic support, as well as dependable temporal resources.
In its position, the AGF is of the perspective that it is necessary to strengthen the overall social responsibility for care-giving. Therefore, a responsible care-giving model, orientated on human dignity, must be developed, in which the individual, the care dependent as well as the care giver, with their individual requirements, must be at the focus of the care efforts.
For ensuring the future of care, the AGF claims to introduce a realistic new definition of “being in need of care”, which orientates itself according to the degree of the total remaining independence and addresses in addition to the physical limitations also psycho-social disorders such as dementia. Above, increased incentive is needed in order to create a fair distribution of care-giving between men and women, in private as well as in professional care.
The family organisations call for reflecting the overall social responsibility for care also in financing the care insurance. The AGF sees it as a necessity that the revenue base be broadened through the equal participation of all forces in society, as well as all types of income in social care insurance.