Subject: Newsletter of the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research
From: European Centre <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 05 May 2020 09:16:54 +0000

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Newsletter April 2020

COVID-19 emergency: We continue our research activities from home

Due to the COVID-19 measures most of our staff are currently working from home and can be reached by e-mail or phone. We continue our research activities and will be happy to respond to any queries.

Research in the time of COVID-19

The impact of COVID-19 on the posting of workers and their workplace safety

The posting of workers describes a process by which companies and temporary work agencies send employees from one EU member state to another to provide a service for a specific period of time in that country based on dedicated EU Directives. Meanwhile, posted employees remain covered by and pay contributions to the social security institutions of their home country.

Posting has seen a sustained increase over the last decade within the EU with the number of posted workers rising from approximately 1 million in 2010 to 1.8 million in 2018. Preliminary findings of our Con3Post project indicate that there has also been a developing trend in the posting of third country nationals – that is the posting of non-EU nationals through a company based in one EU member state to work in another EU member state – in recent years. One example for this is the posting of construction workers from Western Balkan countries like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo via Slovenia to Austria and other EU countries.

Figure 1: Postings to Austria (Number of submitted ZKO3 forms)

Source: Data provided by the Austrian Financial Police

more

Healthy surveillance - happy data sharing!

Readers of this essay are invited to a quiz: try to spot the difference between reality and dystopia!

“Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to this meeting that we are starting today with a new ritual. As you know, registration with the COVID-19 app is a prerequisite for attending this meeting. Now I ask you for the corresponding ‘electronic handshake’. At the same time, I have to inform you that you are obliged to report immediately if you receive a health warning during our session. In this case the session will be terminated.”

more

Policing the healthy and the unhealthy

Research projects at the European Centre demonstrate the significance of inter-disciplinary thinking particularly in times of the worldwide Covid-19 crisis. In fact, what is currently designated as a “health crisis” expands beyond medicine and calls for expertise in several other disciplines of the scientific arena such as economics, political science, legal studies, information technology, sociology and philosophy. Hence, expertise in health economics, social welfare politics, law enforcement, technology assessment and ethics is needed to gauge the social consequences in this situation. In the following contribution, I would like to present findings from European Centre’s research together with fresh ideas to underline this inter-disciplinary approach.

more

Highlight

Successful closing of the Interreg Project “Age-Friendly Region” across the Austrian-Hungarian border

“Age-friendly Region” (AFR) aimed at developing new care models so older people can live longer at home with the best possible quality of life, including:

Tailored case & care management

Interregional cooperation among organizations in Styria & Western Hungary

Evaluation by the European Centre

A pre-post survey of 100 health and care experts indicated that networking and collaboration improved during AFR. Also, 230 older clients reported their health status, which they assessed about 3% higher at the end—compared to older people without AFR services (e.g., on the EQ-5D visual analogue scale).

The evaluation points to a positive direction of AFR effectively addressing growing LTC needs, and recommends:

Making services participative, integrated & interdisciplinary,

Considering regional differences, and

Continuing AFR sustainably.

AFR was funded by the European Regional Development Fund. More details at here

More findings

Projects

New project: Situation Analysis of children and adolescents in Croatia

The European Centre team will support UNICEF Croatia in drafting the Situation Analysis of children and adolescents in Croatia. The Situation Analysis examines the degree of realization of children’s rights, investigates the more

Publications

New literature review: Methodological overview on collecting practices in various policy contexts

This literature review "Definitions, models and dimensions of good practices" is the first Working Paper of the project “Mapping promising social services and policy measures to support the independent living of older people”. more

New publication: Comprehensive country report on COVID-19 and long-term care in Austria

Kai Leichsenring and Andrea E. Schmidt with colleagues from the Chamber of Labour and LSE have compiled a comprehensive updated report about developments in the long-term care sector since the outbreak of the COVID-19 more

New Policy Brief: The lost potential of SDG 17

This Policy Brief analyses how partnership is understood and promoted in European Union regulations and programmes. The central argument of the brief is that a much deeper understanding of partnership than that presented in the Sustainable more

Upcoming Events

New Initiative: The European Centre Training Programme

The European Centre launched the European Centre Training Programme, a new initiative offering a range of tailor-made training modules in the following thematic areas:
Employment
Social Inclusion
Rights and more

Postponed to Autumn 2020: International Seminar: No Country for the Unemployed

Rafael Labanino from the Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz is our upcoming guest speaker of the International Seminar that was originally due on 28 April 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic travel more

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European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research · Berggasse 17, Wien, Österreich · Wien 1090 · Austria