The Government Office sent for approval a draft legislation whereby a Task Force will be formed in cooperation with the Ministry of Social Affairs for reducing the burden of care.
The duty of the Task Force is to map the problems related to caring for family members and close ones and develop solutions that make it possible to provide need-based social and health care services by combining financial aids and services.
According to Statistics Estonia, the number of people aged 15-74 who are currently inactive due to caring for family members is 17,400 which makes up 1.8 percent of all people aged 15-74 and 5.5 percent of all inactive people aged 15-74. Labour market participation is additionally disrupted for tens of thousands of people as a lot of carers work part-time.
According to the Estonian Labour Force Survey, approximately 30,000 women and 17,000 men have an obligation of care. 59 percent of all the carers provide help for a disabled person at least 3 hours per day, which can be considered a heavy burden of care. In addition to caring for people who are 15 years old and older, it should be taken into account that the obligation of care also concerns caring for disabled children; 27 percent of them are raised by single parents. The absolute poverty rate of disabled children (24.4%) is three times as high as the absolute poverty rate of children in general.
Rait Kuuse, the Deputy Secretary General on Social Policy at the Ministry of Social Affairs, emphasised that the Ministry is already taking several measures that aim to improve the quality and availability of social services: “For example, we are in the middle of establishing minimum requirements for social services; in addition, we support local governments in offering services that decrease the burden of care with the help of the European Social Fund,” he said.
“Despite all that is already done, we still see the need to find sustainable cross-sectoral solutions to the burden of care problem. It is important that services that support working, prevent and decrease the burden of care, would be equally available to everyone in Estonia and of a high quality nature,” said Kuuse.
According to the draft legislation, work of the Task Force brings together the Ministry of Social Affairs, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Justice, the Estonian Health Insurance Fund, the Social Insurance Board, the Estonian Chamber of Disabled People, NGO Estonian Carers, the Association of Directors of Estonian Care Homes, the Association of Estonian Cities, the Association of Municipalities of Estonia, Tartu City Government, the Estonian Service Industry Association, the Estonian Social Enterprise Network, the Estonian Nurses Association, and Reeli Sirotkina – a lecturer of social work at the University of Tartu and the University of Tallinn. The Government Office is responsible for convening and coordinating the Task Force.
In planning its activities, the Task Force will draw from existing analyses and information and the areas of concern that have been previously been brought up by the by interest groups and others concerned. During the work of the Task Force, a wider circle of participants is called to participate in thematic discussions when necessary, so that all important partners of the sector in question would be able to give their input to the work of the Task Force.
The Task Force is chaired by Anniki Lai, who has long-term experience in social sector policy-making and who was the Head of the Children and Families Department at the Ministry of Social Affairs for the past five years.
The establishment of the Task Force is scheduled for the Government’s Activity Programme for 2015-2019 and the Task Force's term for the completion of tasks is November 2017.
The Government assigned the duty of putting together task forces to the Government Office in 2011. The Task Force is being formed in the fields concerning several ministries and requiring cross-sectoral cooperation. The Task Force on combining the skills of people and labour market changes, the Task Force established to coordinate the prevention policy for injuries and deaths due to injury, and the Task Force on the formation of Estonian eHealth National Strategy have previously operated within the Government Office.
The draft legislation is available at theinformation system of draft legislations.
More information: Anniki Lai, Head of the Task Force, e-mail [email protected], telephone +372 5698 2289
Rait Kuuse, Deputy Secretary General on Social Policy at the Ministry of Social Affairs, e-mail [email protected], telephone +372 626 9321