Abstract
Background: Recent schemes address the challenge that patients’ needs for quality and coordinated services are not sufficiently met in the welfare state. In recent years, a number of measures have been carried out to support integration among the organisations in the health and welfare service organisations and one of the main strategies developed is streamlining of health care through standardised tools and techniques. Neo-liberal ideology focusing on effectiveness and modernisation of the public sector seems to be adopted into the Nordic welfare model. At the same time as this streamlined approach, the need for “tailored” services is emphasised as important in addressing the issues of empowerment.
By analysing people’s expectation of future health and welfare services this paper discusses how the two contradictory core values unfolds within the framework of a Nordic welfare state.
Methods: This is a qualitative study. We conducted individual interviews with one woman and one man in each 10-year, thus representing ages from 20 to 80. We also interviewed two senior experts at research centres and two politicians. The participants were asked three questions:
- If you could decide, how would the welfare services be organized 20 years from now? 2. How do you think it will actually be organized? 3. If I asked you the same questions 10 years ago, would you give me the same answers? If not, what has changed?
We used NVivo for thematic content analysis in coding categories and themes.
Results and Lessons learned: This is an ongoing study and the results will be presented and discussed at the conference. The preliminary analysis shows tailored welfare services as important in addressing issues of people’s individual needs, empowerment and daily well-being. On the other side; cost effective streamlined “one size fit all” services are perceived as potential future model of the welfare state. Cooperative models including people’s perspective emerges as an important issue to reach ideals of integration from the people’s perspective.
Limitations and suggestions for future research: From people’s perspective, quality of integrated services relies on tailoring. To a certain extent, the upcoming results will be of relevance for a better understanding of the complexity of organising welfare services.
Keywords: Welfare state, expectations, scenarios, integration, empowerment