Health and social services sector
With Europe’s ageing population and declining fertility rates, the need for health and social services is set to increase dramatically. The role of the European Union in determining a long-term strategy takes on ever more importance in this respect.
Health and social services in all EU Member States face similar challenges in adjusting to demographic ageing, changing employment and family patterns, evolving technological opportunities and funding issues. Reform of health and social services will be necessary therefore, as there is a current tendency to rely on market mechanisms as a means of increasing efficiency. Nevertheless, recent advances in information and communication technology, and in genomics and other biotechnologies, have had positive effects on the efficiency of healthcare services.
Challenges also lie ahead in relation to working conditions in the health and social services sector. Due to increasing job demands, less job control and skilled work, working conditions in this sector – which has an overwhelmingly female workforce – have become less favourable.
For further information, see:
- Representativeness of the European social partner organisations: Hospitals (EIRO 2009)
- Health and social work
This fact sheet presents a snapshot of working conditions in the health and social work sector; - Employment in social care in Europe
- Violence, employment and health (EWCO 2005)
- The
health and social services sector – what future?
A series of three articles in the EMCC Sector Futures series, providing a snapshot of the health and social services sector and exploring policy issues likely to impact on the sector in the future; - Family care of the elderly
- Online casebook of best practice examples in relation to dependent elderly people, adults with learning disabilities, adults with mental health problems, and young unemployed people;
- Increase in violence at work in the healthcare sector
- All EWCO articles on working conditions in the health and social services sector
- All EIRO articles on industrial relations in the health and social services sector
See news and analysis at national and comparative level from 1997 to 2009; - All EMCC articles on industrial change and restructuring in the health and social services sector
- Search ERM factsheets and discover which health and social services have restructuring plans.