Policy Analysis in Response to Population Aging: Long Term Care and Social Support for Older People and Family Caregivers

Aging in place is a core component of current public policy on aging in Israel. This is well expressed in the Long-Term Care Insurance law and provision of services that were developed alongside legislation.  However, as a familistic society, care for older people is mainly a family responsibility according to cultural norms and values and under the law. We will discuss the government social policy and acts as well as responsibility to allocate resources and to formulate social and economic available and accessible services. Moreover, the intergenerational consequences of decisions taken in the planning and implementation of policies towards older people will be identified.

Using the Incremental Approach for public policy analysis, we will review government-institutional reports, decision making and legislative processes that were implemented in the last three decades, to analyze public policies and procedures that were enacted in response to the population aging care challenges.

State response to changes in care needs will be examined on three levels: 1. updating the legislation toward elderly and family caregivers; 2. allocating resources to answer the new needs of the elderly population and 3. developing public services and programs responding to the growing needs of family caregivers.

The analysis indicates that there was an attempt by the government to understand the meaning of economic and social implications of aging population. However, no clear-cut policy exists to deal with increasing care needs of the elderly and their family caregivers. Also, a slow and cumbersome decision-making procedure that does not trace the rapid changes was detected. Due to a lack of sufficient economic resources to develop new policies for services and/or programs for older people and family caregivers the government transferred most responsibility to the family without provision of adequate support to assist them with their caregiving roles along with other life commitments (work, children, etc.).