LeTs-Care · Learning from long-Term Care practices for the European Care Strategy

European societies find themselves in a window of opportunity for the advancement of LTC policies and practices. The pandemic has made clear that there is a need for accessible, affordable and quality services, more equality, protection and inclusion for people in need of care, informal caregivers and care workers, and sustainability. To meet these goals, policy makers, stakeholders and researchers need to comprehend the challenges ahead, the patterns and drivers of inequalities in LTC, the potential contribution of emerging practices and the development of contextualised sustainable practices. LeTs-Care originally combines an ethnographic approach with the analysis of territorial indicators and fuzzy-set/Qualitative analysis to provide a new, in-depth, reflexive understanding of LTC challenges and their diversity across 7 European countries. It will disentangle the meanings of taken-for-granted LTC concepts and illuminate how , e.g., “care” or “integrated care” have different meanings in different contexts. It will produce new evidence and a novel approach to territorial inequalities in LTC, their drivers and interdependencies. The project will conduct 18 ethnographic studies or care practices aimed at improving the wellbeing of care receivers, of care workers and of informal caregivers: ethnographic case studies will comprehend the tensions, trade-offs and choices that underpin these practices and will develop context-sensitive policy recommendations.  Finally, LeT’s-Care will move beyond “best practices” by developing a new, reflexive approach to policy learning and a concrete toolkit. LeTs-Care is based on a strong and diffuse partnership between academic institutions and key LTC stakeholders and policymakers that allow the coproduction of knowledge, enhances the relevance of research and makes a difference. The project’s commitment to Open science will maximise its impact and inform care policies in the agenda in the years to come.