1st Multi-venue Conference on Social Services, Care and the Community: The Care We Want

The long-term care system is undergoing a profound transformation: rapid demographic changes, increasingly complex support needs, and growing expectations for personalised, community-based care models that focus on independence. This context calls for a thorough review of the skills, roles and working methods required of professionals today, ranging from new roles linked to support provision, community engagement or the coordination of support services, to the incorporation of digital skills, cross-sectoral work and rights-based methodologies. Added to this is a European and national agenda promoting professional development, modular and continuous training, skills accreditation and the review of organisational frameworks to enable person-centred practices.

At the same time, the sector faces structural challenges that affect its sustainability: a shortage of professionals, an ageing workforce, demanding working conditions, high levels of part-time work and difficulties in attracting talent. Yet progress is also being made: the updating of professional qualifications, improvements in occupational risk prevention, recent reforms to improve the status of domestic work, organisational innovations across many regions and international experiences that point to promising avenues.

This event, organised by the Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and the 2030 Agenda, will take place in Zamora and will focus on these two major challenges in order to identify trends, share solutions already in place and draw up a realistic roadmap for the future of the professions that underpin care and social services.

Our colleague Laura Fernández, a researcher at Matia Institute, will be taking part in a plenary session entitled: ‘Professionals facing a person- and community-centred model: trends and transformations in professional practice’.