The implementation of the Charter of Rights for People in Need of Long-Term Care and Assistance stands for putting into practice humanity, autonomy, privacy and respect in long-term care. Many individual persons, care organizations and institution have pushed the implementation of the Charter on different levels.


How do institutions use the Charter?

• Policy and organisations: Mission statements and concepts for policy, local authorities and institutions, reference in legislations, (vocational) codes of professional associations
• Care insurance funds: Information, counseling and surveys of insured persons
• Care organisations and services: Quality circle, quality assessment, events for sensitising for needs of persons in need of care and assistance, vocational training and advanced education for staff, information and counseling for residents of care homes and their relatives, contracting with care homes.

Self-evaluation projects in care homes and home care organisations

The BMFSFJ funded two Charter based self-evaluation projects (2008, 2010) in care homes and home care organisations. The outcomes of these projects are well-proven internal quality development tools: (1) Charter based manuals for self-evaluation of care homes and home care services to assess the extent of the implementation of the Charter quality principles, (2) a collection of internal quality tools for the further implementation of the Charter quality principles both in care homes and home care organisations.

Both projects followed the same process: (1) develop a manual for self-evaluation to assess to which extent the eight articles of the Charter are already put into practice, (2) go through the self-evaluation process, based on the self-evaluation manual, supported by an external moderator, (3) based on the results of the self-evaluation, search (or develop) internal quality tools to further implement the Charter and define concrete plans for action, (4) control the implementation of the concrete plans for action, (5) disseminate examples of good practice to the public via Charter workshops, conferences, website and publications.

Decisive success factors for the self-evaluation were to involve the staff right from the beginning and to sensitise staff for the issue of dignity of care. In some care organisations, the management organised work meetings, quality circles, special “Charter working groups”, methods for sensitising for dignity of care and other measures to motivate the staff (see example for a staff training method for sensitising for the dignity of care in the following section).

Excerpt from self-evaluation manual for home care services, based on the German Charter:

To download complete self-evaluation manuals, both for home care services and care homes please click here.

The self-evaluation process led to the implementation (and to some extent development) of a huge variety of internal quality tools to further implement the Charter in the care organisations, like:

• ethical case conferences on problematic care situations, based on the Charter
• a regional poster campaign to increase public awareness on the rights and needs of people in need of care (“well cared-for... to the theatre, shopping, to the pub, or to church“), accompanied by respective activities of the home care organisation.
• the set-up of regular social evenings for relatives (“candle-light dinners”)
• theatre and photography events to sensitise for rights of care home residents
• realisation of palliative care

The care organisations profited from the self-evaluation on three different levels: (1) improved work motivation of the staff, (2) awareness of the staff that daily work routines need to be challenged in to improve conditions for dignity of care, (3) concrete plans for action for quality improvement, (3) encouragement of the care organisations to communicate strengths to the public (promotion of public relation.

How can citizens support the implementation of the Charter?

• Disseminate the Charter in their surroundings
• Communicate notions and visions of dignity of care
• Advocate the realization of rights and requests of people in need of care and assistance.

^{6 cents per call from German landline, maximum of 42 cents from mobile phones}