On October 2009, COFACE organised the seminar “Dependent persons in the European Union: who cares about their family carers?”. The aim was to take stock of national situations around Europe, identifying the key challenges and/or good practices in help for carers with front-line NGOs, and to join with representatives of the European institutions and European NGOs in looking at how European policies should be supporting family carers. (Report)

The seminar was attended by many stakeholders, notably European Commission representatives, NGOs from across Europe, and Bulgarian participants from ministries, service providers and the voluntary sector. A special focus was put on the situation in the Central and Eastern European Member States, where policies for family carers are still underdeveloped.

COFACE and Eurocarers stressed that the European Union could do much to foster the implementation of carer-friendly policies in the different Member States through exchanges of good practices and giving a policy impetus by setting targets under the Open Method of Coordination on social protection and social inclusion and mainstreaming the issue across the different relevant European policy spheres: disability, health, gender equality, demography... etc.