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With the support of the European Commission’s Daphne III Programme, AGE worked a project with a network of 11 partner organisations to develop:
- A European Charter on the rights of older people, and women in particular, who are dependent on a family member or carer, or are need of long-term care or assistance.
- An Accompanying Guide or ‘toolkit’ addressing each of the rights expressed in the Charter, explaining what they concretely mean and how they can be enforced.
Only a few examples of good practices were introduced in the accompanying guide. The whole list of good practices is available here.
On the 17th November, the EUSTACEA project held its final conference in the European Parliament. More information is available in Latest news.
The project ended in December 2010 but AGE successfully applied to a new project to prevent elder abuse and improve quality care, the WeDO Project - a European Partnership for the Wellbeing and Dignity of Older people. More information is available on our website: http://www.age-platform.eu/en/wellbeing.
The partners of the project were based in Netherlands (ANBO), Germany (BIVA), France (FNG), in Italy (FIPAC), Greece (Hellas 50+), Slovenia (Mestna zveva upokojencev Ljubljana), United Kingdom (NIACE), Sweden (SPF), Czech Republic (Zivot 90) and Belgium (Commune de Saint-Josse), and the European Organization E.D.E. The project run until December 2010.
The final version of the European Charter and of the accompanying guide are available ! You can find a whole list of examples of good practices linked to the EU charter here.
You can download it here :
The Accompanying Guide is available in 9 languages :
You can find a list of related documents and interesting links here. If you wish to have more information on the project, please feel free to contact Maude Luherne at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
What is the Daphne programme ?
The European Commission’s Daphne programme began as a one-year initiative back in 1997. The programme aims to combat violence against women, children and young people in Europe. Since its beginnings, it has brought together the experience of hundreds of individuals and organizations and has broken new ground in research and action to protect Europe’s most vulnerable citizens. For more information on Daphne III, see the European Commission’s webpages.
The charter and toolkit
Building on existing national initiatives such as the “Charter of Rights of People with dependency” adopted in 2007 by the German Government and the French “Charter of Rights of People in Need of Long-Term Care and Assistance”, the project partners developed a “European charter of rights of older people, in particular older women in need of long-term care and assistance”.
Drawing on successful and innovative initiatives from across the EU, the accompanying guide adresses the following questions: What is elder abuse? How can it be spotted? Why does it happen and how can it be prevented? And when it does happen, how should it be treated? Through consultation that will involve older people themselves, recommendations will be developed for European, national and local authorities, service providers, older people’s organisations and potential victims.
The strategy : approach and implementation
The project adopted a broad-ranging definition of abuse encompassing intentional violence and mistreatment but also neglect. The charter not focus exclusively on older women and address issues that are relevant to both sexes. Younger groups benefit too because prevention and awareness-raising of potential victims must start at a much younger age: older people should be empowered as early as possible to protect themselves against abuse. The project attempted to cover all forms of elder abuse drawing on the expertise of partners in tackling abuse in institutions, community and home care settings, financial crimes and scamming for instance.
A series of national workshops was organised by the partners. Each workshop addressed a specific dimension of elder abuse (elder abuse in formal/informal care settings, financial abuse, awareness campaigns, the role of local authorities, carers’ issues and so on). During the workshops, partners gathered input from a variety of stakeholders: older people themselves, public authorities, service providers, and experts in the field. A steering group, comprising representatives of each of the partner organisations met several times a year to lead on project development.
Long term impact
The project has helped raise awareness of the need to protect older vulnerable people in today’s context of rapid demographic ageing.
Through the deliverables (Charter and Guide) the project has helped develop tools that will be very useful to raise awareness of what can be done at European and national level to fight elder abuse. Thanks to the project and on-going policy work, the issue of elder abuse and quality of long-term care for the elderly was supported by successive EU presidencies (CZ, SE, ES, BE) and various national governments, and local public authorities are interested to promote it and use it for their own work. The European Charter is now used as a reference document at EU and national level. It was mentioned in a recent EC (DG EMPL) call for a pilot project on elder abuse and by the European Parliament during its hearing of the Hungarian Presidency.
The project helped build consensus among a wide range of stakeholders. It builds support for the European Charter to become a reference document for the development of a European Partnership for the wellbeing and dignity of older people, a follow-up project, which will now seek to build of the EUSTACEA project to develop tools to improve quality of care for elderly as a mean to fight elderabuse. This new pilot project funded by DG EMPL gathers 18 partners from 12 different countries. It seeks to contribute to the on-going debate on the voluntary European Quality framework for social services developed by the Social Protection Committee and will make recommendations on how this framework can be applied to long-term care. The new project will seek to set up a European Partnership of stakeholders committed to combat elder abuse and to promote the wellbeing and dignity of older dependent and frail persons through quality tools based on our EUSTACEA Charter. The long-term impact of the EUSTACEA project is ensured through this new project which will end in November 2012.
Last Updated on Thursday, 10 March 2011 15:28
