Sweden is seen as a typical example of a social-democratic welfare regime, with universal and generous welfare policies. However, in the last decades, there have been substantial reductions in the Swedish provision of care for older people. This study aimed to examine trends in sources of care-receipt in older people (77+) living in their own home and with a perceived need of help with two specific tasks: house cleaning or food shopping. Trends in care-receipt were examined in relation to gender, living alone, having children and socioeconomic position. Data from the 1992, 2002 and 2011 data collection waves of the national study SWEOLD was used. Response rates varied between 86 and 95 per cent, and the sample represents the population well. Trends and differences between groups were explored in bivariate and logistic regression analyses. There was a reduction in formal care-receipt regarding house cleaning and food shopping over the study period. It was more common for women than men to receive formal care, and more common for men than women to receive informal care. Reductions in formal care have affected older women more than older men. Still, living alone was the most influential factor in care-receipt, associated with a greater likelihood of formal care-receipt and a lower likelihood of informal care-receipt. It can be concluded that public responsibility for care is becoming more narrowly defined in Sweden, and that more responsibility for care is placed on persons in need of care and their families.
This study examines the support services offered to informal caregivers, whether directly or indirectly, in Sweden over the period of a special investment initiative between 1999 and 2001. Data were collected in a Swedish county using two separate mail questionnaires in 1999 and 2001. The first questionnaire was addressed to each municipality in the region. The second questionnaire was sent to a random sample of voluntary organizations in the area. The findings showed that only the municipalities provided direct forms of relief service, day care and financial support. The voluntary organizations’ support for carers focused on support groups and training as well as services for older care users themselves. There was a significant increase between 1999 and 2001 in the number of municipalities providing information material and training for carers and using professional caregiver consultants. On the one hand, the Swedish public social care system appears to be following the international pattern in paying more attention to informal caregivers and investing in support services for them. On the other hand the findings did not show any growth in support provided by the voluntary organizations. Here Swedish welfare is dissimilar to other European countries, where it is increasingly common for voluntary organizations to play an important role as providers of support for carers.
This article analyses informal help and caregiving in Sweden with a focus on the scope and trends of change over time. The discussion is based on the results of three national surveys and of one survey conducted in the county of Stockholm. The results indicated that informal help and caregiving was common throughout the period under study. In the 1990s, the figures were fairly stable, while from the late 1990s to 2005 there seems to have been a dramatic increase in the prevalence of such support. Two interpretative perspectives are used to discuss this pattern. One locates its point of departure in recent welfare state changes and in the substitution argument, according to which cuts in welfare services put more pressure on people to provide informal help and care. The second perspective relates to the present debate on civil society and to its possible role in contemporary society. According to the civil society perspective, an increase in the prevalence of informal help and caregiving might be interpreted as an expression of growing civic involvement ‘in its own right’, without a straightforward and simple relationship to changes in the welfare state. It is argued in the article that the two frames of interpretation should not be viewed as mutually exclusive, but rather that they represent two partly complementary approaches to the understanding of the complex dynamics of unpaid work in contemporary Swedish society.
This article argues that the financial crisis did not have a strong impact on Czech social policy. In contrast to the garbage-can model, in which policymakers wait for a ‘window of opportunity’ to implement radical reforms, the Czech centre-right parties instead used the crisis as a means of continuing their market-liberal reforms that they had initiated before the crisis had even begun. Since they had extremely little public support for their reforms, they tried to bring about gradual change. Thus, instead of pulling radical reforms out of the garbage-can, Czech right-wing politicians have tended to take out smaller biodegradable goods that can decay and compost into fertile ground in order to sow the seeds of gradual change.