Upcoming workshops
In the framework of the ‘Advancing Personal and Household Services (Ad-PHS)’, the European Federation for Services to Individuals (EFSI) organises the national workshop on Belgium on the 6th of May 2019 in Brussels.
The workshop will focus on understanding the current state of the sector in Belgium and the gathering of best practice examples. In particular, participants will be invited to discuss stakeholders’ rights and obligations, as well as the development of online platforms and networks.
Participation is on invitation only. If you wish more information about the event, please contact EFSI.
More workshops are also planned for the comings weeks:
- Denmark (EASPD) – 27/05/2019
- Ireland (Uni Europa) – 30/05/2019
- Germany (IWAK) – 17/06/2019
- Netherlands (EASPD) – 21/06/2019
- Spain (EFFE) – 25/06/2019
- France (EFFE) – 01/07/2019
State of Play in the 21 EU Member States
The State of Play Report, as part of the Ad-PHS project and to be released in the coming weeks, seeks to consider the state of the PHS sector across 21 EU Member States. The report explains why Personal Household Services should play an important role in the European Union agenda and suggests approaches for analysing PHS at the national level. The report relies on examples of policies and instruments currently in use in various Member States to develop a framework of how PHS functions in different contexts. This framework can help countries with advanced PHS sectors as well as those with less advanced sectors further the EU and their own national discourses on this key area of development.
As the report underlines, another important goal of the Ad-PHS project is to further assess the current and planned instruments in 21 Member States through workshops and seminars in each country. These events will bring together social partners and key stakeholders in the sector. The goal will be to understand which challenges each country has sought to overcome and what instruments have been useful in achieving that end. By assessing these instruments, the project will develop a deeper understanding of how they impact users, employees and firms and whether they are best suited for working arrangements directly contracted between users and employees or including triangular relationships that involve intermediary firms.
Through the Ad-PHS project, these experiences in individual Member States can be shared and analysed for the benefit of developing an EU-wide policy for PHS as well as stronger exchange of ideas between countries.
Objective
There are two main sectoral activities in Personal and Household Services (PHS): social care and household support, yet with a possible growing overlap between the two. Current societal developments such as changes to family structures increase the need for PHS. Furthermore, the unprecedented and general ageing of our society increases demand for home help and care services.
In that regard, the overarching objective of the Ad-PHS project (Grant agreement No. VS/2018/0344) is to lead to the creation of a platform of relevant PHS stakeholders at EU level. Its main goal is to create a single point-of-contact to support, guide and provide advice to Public Authorities in the development of their PHS policies.
The project’s consortium kicked-off the project on the 9th-10th of January with a meeting in Brussels.
An Advisory Board for the project will be set up, involving different stakeholder organisations. If your organisation wants to be involved, please contact us.
For more information on the Ad-PHS project, and keep up-to-date with the project’s latest news, visit the project webpage here.