Changing Minds, Policies and Lives

One of the legacies of the command economy in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has been a system of social protection for vulnerable individuals which focuses on institutional care.This paper provides a framework to help countries re-orient their financing systems for social care, so that they can implement a change programme for the social care system. The ultimate objective is for countries to use more family-based and inclusive care programmes, and use institutional care as a last resort, thus supporting families to care for their vulnerable members rather than place them in residential care. Family-based and inclusive care are generally more effective in meeting social needs and are, at least on a unit cost basis, less expensive. Changing the financing system will not automatically reduce institutionalization.