Smart Homecare - CARER+ Final Conference, Paris, 27 March 2015

1. CARER+
Conference
Current agenda on Personal and
Household services
Palais du Luxembourg, Paris, France
27 Mars 2015
Anita Vella – European Commission, DG EMPL

2. What are we talking about ?
Activities made at home
CARE (without health dimension) NON-CARE
• Child Cleaning
• Elderly Ironing
• Disabled Gardening
• Dependent …..
Social policy Employment policy
• SSIG Undeclared workers
• Access Job creation
• Quality Made at home Use of time
• Answers to needs
• Complementarities but different logics
• Low-medium skills
• Self-production possible

3. Aims of initiatives on Personal and
Household services
PHS could give a possible answer to:
1- Better work-life balance
2- Creation of job opportunities for the relatively
low-skilled
3- Improvement in the quality of care services
(specialisation)

4. Future Demographic evolution
Europeans aged 65+
will almost double over
the next 50 years:
87,5 million in 2010 to
152,6 million in 2060
The female
employment rate
increased from
55,6% in 1998 to
62,6% in 2013
The reservoir of
informal careers will
diminish. Need to re-
think the informal
household-based care
for children & the
elderly & housework

5. Aiming at a better work-life
balance
One of the target of the EU for 2020 is to bring to 75%
the employment of 20-64 year-olds
For the time being there is 12% less women working
than men …
… and many women are working part time to
reconciliate work-life balance
Women are more educated than men (54,9% in tertiary
education) and in the 30-34 years old, 39,9% of women
finished their tertiary education against 31,5% for men

6. Problem of work-life balance
One fifth of European workers are having difficulties
achieving a satisfactory work–life balance
To increase this rate and thus foster our growth, we
must improve the work-life balance
To improve the work-life balance, one of the tracks is
the Personal and Household Services

7. Potential of job creation with a low cost for
public finance
Earn back effects
•Additional personal
taxes/social security
contributions and
reductions in
unemployment benefits
related to the job creation.
Indirect earn back effects
• Better work–life balance, which
also contributes to higher
competitiveness through less
stress, less absenteeism and
higher productivity;
• Savings achieved in comparison
with costs of alternative solutions
(especially for LTC and the
possibility for elderly people to stay
at home);
• Job creation for the management
of the provider;
• More consumption by the service
workers, increasing aggregate
demand, etc..

8. what is the real cost of an intervention ?
(based on a study made in Belgium)*
Users pay
7,5€
Price after fiscal
deductibility 5,9€
Price on
the black
market
8,59€
Suppression of
fiscal
deductibility so
the price for a
service voucher
increased up to
8,59€
Gross cost : 1,4 billion €
Earn back effects : 0, 630 billion €
Indirect effects : 0,4 and 0,5 billion €
Net cost : 0,4 and 0,3 billion €
Job creation (FTE) 80.000
* Data from 2012
In average, the net cost is
25 million €
or 300€ / year for a job
IF

9. Now concretely, how is the European
Commission (DG EMPL) supporting this
sector?
- SWD on PHS in April 2012
- European Conference on PHS in January 2013
- Call for proposal "Delivering on skills for growth and
jobs", notably to gather best practices on PHS launched
in 2013, began in 2014
- Possible launch of a thematic review on PHS in 2015
(ongoing)

10. Focus on the call for proposals on PHS
The Commission services is currently supporting actions in 3
areas of personal and household services:
• Measurement
• Quality
• Efficiency
A balanced distribution of funding between the three topics has
been sought (+/- 250.000€ each)
The outcomes of these projects will be available by mid 2016

11. PHS: measurement
• Aims: improve measurement and monitoring of
the employment and budget effects of support
given by public authorities.
 IMPact project
• Team: a transnational network having the
capacity to extrapolate, for the EU28, existing
national studies of public intervention concerning
tools used or planned to support the PHS

12. PHS: quality
• Aims: promote quality of services and jobs (skill
needs, working conditions, development of
quality standards and other ways to ensure
greater professionalisation of PHS jobs).
• For quality! Project
• Team: A transnational network having the
capacity to share best practices through the
European Union.

13. PHS: efficiency
• Aims: analyse & share practices & projects
dealing with the achievement of efficiency
(productivity gains, introduction of new
technologies & the development of new work
organisations)
• BESPAT project
• Team: a transnational network having the
capacity to identify and share interesting
initiatives in this field.

14. Thank you for your attention
• Anita.vella@ec.europa.eu