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[Translated] In Belgium, we are immensely lucky that our health care system is based on solidarity. It is important that this continues and is even strengthened to avoid inequalities.

[translated] Centers for socializing of the elderly should be provided, for playing chess, knitting, and so on; because after they retire they are at home all day and have no communication with other people.

My mother could afford to pay for care but we couldn’t get consistent reliable care due to the pandemic. We chose a residence but even they are limited to what they can provide and in Canada if a higher level of care is required then the person needs to go to LTC which wasn’t available at the time and she ended up staying in hospital until she passed. The government offers home supports with a cookie cutter approach; not tailored to what would make staying in her home possible. PSWs [personal support workers] to help shower and dress but no service to wash dishes. She could shower, [but] she needed help with dinner and dishes or laundry. The maximum hours [funded by the] Government is 4 hours/week not enough to sustainably stay home.

[translated -excerpt, emphasis in original text] Home-based assistance offered by the Romanian state to older people DOES NOT EXIST. This is unacceptable. […] for sick people and the elderly the situation is extremely BAD. There is no help. No state funded services to help them at home or in an institution, facilities for the elderly are so bad they are more like prisons or labour camps. I also strongly advise you to do a study and personal visits to psychiatric hospitals, and how mental health is treated in Romania.

[Translated] I would like such surveys to be more efficient and to have more participation in them, and consequently I would like to talk and learn more about these issues in order to take action and make life easier for many individuals.

[Translated] In the next few years, Germany will need more good care facilities, if possible connected with other living facilities in which partners can also live. With high quality standards, but also with empathetic nursing and care staff and good living standards. With medical care, physiotherapy and a good activation program. Care should be affordable for all and not be passed on to family members who risk their health, private life and income for it. Nursing home care should not be stigmatized, as it relieves relatives of a great deal of work and ensures care free interaction with the persons to be cared for. Financial reasons should not be the reason why people do not go to a nursing home, because the psychological burden is too high.

[Translated] It would be good if the decisions were also upheld when the care allowance is raised. Often the decision ends up in court and it is possible to challenge it. It should not be made difficult for those who are dependent on this financial support.

[translated] This issue [of long-term care] needs to be discussed and prioritised by the state, because the population is ageing, children are going abroad and local structures for [supporting older people] need to be improved and a concrete annual budget established. We will all reach an age when we need help.

[…] When Covid came along it destroyed very important connections that enable older people in nursing homes to keep going & stay connected, to keep hope alive – the deterioration in my Mother in just 18 months was, & still is, devastating & resulted in her recent death. All those months we were unable to be by her side & keep her going, instead she wasted away as she was unable to comprehend what was going on with Covid, yet she was aware enough to know we were no longer with her. Looking through a window trying to communicate love & care to someone with dementia & who is very confused about why you wouldn’t come inside was one of the cruelest experiences. It was terrible to witness just how much our older people are let down by lack of creative, adequate, & in my opinion humane, care options because even in times of desperation when I considered taking my Mother out of the nursing home to live with me the pain of knowing that was not possible was very heavy as I knew the reality of what it had been like 4 years previously trying to care for her – lack of adequate home help, lack of adequate services – & now along now with significantly increased care needs it would have been a recipe for crisis. I became very unwell physically when I’d been involved in her care prior to her going to live in the nursing home.”

[translated] There is a need to develop care services in the country, especially home (community-based) care as well as mental health, rehabilitation and recovery, and palliative care services.