Publications

Research carried out by the European Centre had already shown pervasive inequalities in access to care as well as in the coverage of health insurance and potential remedies. The Covid-19 crisis brings the evidence to the headlines of the news that social inequalities and the dismantling of health and social welfare systems are killing people. The current crisis also shows that health and social care are not a ‘product’ which can be produced low-cost and provided to those with sufficiently large incomes only.

In the current conditions of coronapandemia, social services and the activities of social service providers are communicated in Slovakia in two main contexts. Firstly, social service providers, their managements and staff are highlighted as heroes of the today who act „in the first line“. Secondly, the venues of social services are considered as one of the possible spaces for the infection outbreaks of the COVID-19 disease. In connection with COVID-19, in organisations providing social services for care-dependent persons the state emergency status was declared in the end of March 2020, and, since April 2020 they have become subjects of economic mobilization.