PREFACE

We all face different taboos and prejudices during our whole life in all possible activities, segments, areas, environments. They appear and disappear and change with time; generally changing with our society and the world. This also ap­plies to the long-term care sector.

It’s my pleasure to introduce to you another key document of the Euro­pean Ageing Network made by our members – experts from the long-term care sector.

It’s a follow up document to the VI­SION 2030 for long-term care that we introduced at the end of 2019. You can find some of the taboos or prejudices in our VISION 2030 that we have identified as barriers for future and sustainable develop­ment of long-term care in the Eu­ropean countries. Creating a new working group with experts from 7 European countries who worked on describing the biggest taboos and prejudices was a logical conse­quence.

The more you talk about taboos and prejudices the less powerful they are. Sometimes the only rea­son we are facing them is because we are afraid or feel uncomfortable talking about them. Often, we lack all of the information.

This document was created to show the biggest taboos and preju­dices, to open discussions, to bring the missing information and to break the taboos and prejudices.

We believe and hope that these open expert discussions will not only break or eliminate some of these taboos and prejudices, but could contribute to better care, higher quality of life for long-term care receivers and to better long-term care environments, improving how the sector is viewed.

We are happy for you to share, dis­seminate and use this document to benefit from it. Thank you for your work in caring for older people.

You can download the report here.

Jiří Horecký
President of the European Ageing Network