When designing the long-term systems of the future, people’s quality of life should be at the centre. The European Social Network’s 2026 European Social Service Conference (ESSC) provided a key opportunity for authorities, social services, and activities to picture, discuss, and build person-centred, long-term care systems of the future.
Bringing humanity into the system means taking some risks
Teun Toebes, older people’s rights activist and nurse apprentice, spent three and a half years living in a dementia ward in the Netherlands at the age of 21, living under the same roof with people being placed there due to orientation issues, dementia, and other frailties, and sharing dinners, free time activities, and even bathrooms with them.
His conclusion from this experience, as highlighted in his documentary ‘Human Forever’, was that our current system is so concentrated on risk avoidance and professional distance between staff and people that it results in a plummeting quality of life for people entering residential care, and takes away their individuality. During his session at the ESSC, he said, “If you feel locked up, you feel you need to push the door handle. If you have places that feel like home, there is less need to go outside”, adding that “there is an obsession with safety in care systems and that we have no risk, we create systems where self-direction and self-agency is not possible.” ESN sees safety as one aspect of quality but not the only one.
Ensuring quality of life, not just quality of care
For instance, the European Social Network’s European Framework for Quality in Social Services aims to directly address this fine line between ensuring people's safety, which is certainly part of quality of life, and allowing for self-directed decision-making and co-produced care.
One example of this is under the chapter on safety, which says good quality care means that people can state: “I can decide about my life without putting others at risk”, which means that providers have put policies in place that help staff accompany a person in their life choices, even if they may not be safe, as long as this is a conscious decision. This Framework is now being applied in several European countries, including Iceland and Spain.
Creating inclusive environments & neighbourhoods
Teun also called for not only building more nursing homes to respond to increasing care needs in our societies, but also reshaping how we organise neighbourhoods so that care-dependent people can take part in them. One way of doing this is now being developed at the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council (Spain), where Local Care Ecosystems will coordinate social, health, and community services to help the person in their home. As outlined by Xanti Moriones from the Gipuzkoa Department of Care and Social Policies during ESSC, “in our care ecosystem programme, private and public players solve the disconnect between the health and social services, the community, and specialised municipal services, with the result that people enter residential care 5 years later, while their perceived life quality has much improved.” This means that if we invest in more community-based integrated long-term care we can relieve pressure from residential care, while respecting most people’s wish to stay in their homes and neighbourhood as long as possible.
Building community-based services for care-dependent people
It is now key to build on experiences of older people and people like Teun to create person-centred services that have quality of life as the outcome. This needs to be taken on board, such as the UN now discussing the UN Convention for the Rights of Older Persons. This should also be taken on board when we discuss the EU’s announced Care Deal and its new flagship initiative – EU alliance for Independent Living, as without acting we risk making things worse rather than better.
concluded, we can do more than we think – Teun, for instance, convinced the Dutch government to open doors of closed wards, and today all care homes in the Netherlands have been opened up. People working in social services can move things at their level: managers can introduce new care models, care workers can adapt their way of working or call for a shift to community-based approaches within their organisations. Decision-makers can tap into EU and national funds to introduce innovative ways of working such as the local care ecosystems, or the application of new quality standards that are based on quality of life outcomes for people.
But heads up on EU funding - as EU national governments now negotiate the next 2028-3034 EU budget, social services to ensure that this funding is still available – the current proposals foresees up to 50 % cuts into EU social funding, and the funding still available may be diverted into large infrastructure projects – the exact opposite of community based care promoted by Teun and the European Social Network.
