Recently, Eurodiaconia together with its member organisations Slezska Diakonie (CZ), Diaconia Valdese (IT), and the University of Trnava (SK) published the “Q-Europe Handbook. A Practical Guide to Improving Long-Term-Care in Europe”.
Supported by the Erasmus+ programme, the handbook offers a hands-on tool to support LTC managers to assess and improve their work on rights based service provision. Besides chapters on current developments in the sector, the publication contains a practical implementation plan with videos, case studies, a facilitator’s guide and other material to be used by managers working on quality. The handbook is available in English, versions in Czech, German and Italian will follow soon.
Quality of care is essential in providing services that respect, protect and fulfil the basic human rights of users and which aim for the highest possible standards of their health. Nonetheless, in many European countries, the management of care quality is often seen as contributing to an overload of bureaucracy which subtracts time from “real care”. This negative outlook and, at times resistance to “quality systems” in LTC, can be addressed by shifting the focus of quality management to the tangible impact that high-quality care can have on LTC users.
The Q-Europe Handbook aims to do exactly that by approaching the concept of quality in LTC care through a human rights-based approach. It aims to show that quality management is not a bureaucratic process but rather an exciting way to improve the quality of life of LTC users.
To know more, please have a look at the Q-Europe Handbook. For further information, please get in touch with our Senior Policy, Projects and Research Officer Florian at florian.tuder@eurodiaconia.org.