Addressing social inequality and ensuring healthcare

Through an integrated Brussels welfare and health plan, the Government specifically aims to: 

1. succeed in the switch to ambulatory care and the networking of hospitals;
2. implement the self-reliance guarantee;
3. address the non-use of social rights. This is a new objective compared to the multi-year plan Go4Brussels 2025. Below are the policy yards we are prioritising by 2030.

Shared priority

• Initiating Minister(s): Ministers of Health and Welfare
• Partners: Brupartners, Iriscare, Observatory for Health and Well-being
• Steering Committee: Brupartners, Iriscare, Observatory for Health and Well-being

Making the switch to ambulatory care and networking hospitals succeed. 

The ongoing switch to ambulatory care and the networking of hospitals (will) lead to major reorganisations in the care and assistance sector, including employment. Both parallel phenomena require special and similar attention. It is necessary to monitor, investigate and evaluate them.

This should result in precise recommendations on: 

• the way to ensure that any savings that will result from the creation of hospital networks are reinvested in the quality-of-care provision (improving standards, further developing the precautionary offer, follow-up after hospitalisation, etc.) and thus also contribute to the switch to ambulatory care, without losing sight of the hospitals' social missions;
• the way to coordinate functional reorganisations within a network (e.g. bringing services from several hospitals together in one hospital) and/or outside the hospital, paying particular attention to working conditions.

Leading authority: Minister of Health and Welfare

The Government is committed to ensuring an available and accessible range of services and care for everyone with impaired self-reliance so that they can live independently for as long as possible.

Fulfilling this commitment requires an analysis across institutional boundaries (Region, GGC, COCOF, FCC) of the full range of services that promote personal self-reliance and enable people who want to do so to continue living at home. That analysis should produce proposals on the following:

• the conditions for absorbing the increase in home care hour quotas (GGC and COCOF), mainly in terms of training and recruitment of family helpers;
• the conditions and possibilities for using ‘employment and training measures’ and incorporating them in the framework of the self-reliance guarantee, with attention to the quality of the service and the necessary training for it;
• the ways to enable and/or encourage greater flow between the professions in institutions (RHRVT, etc.) and those in home care (home help, domestic help, etc.) to facilitate the transition between the two (to gradually expand the scope of home care);
• any necessary adjustments to the working frameworks and joint committees to develop and frame new activities aimed at putting the self-reliance guarantee into practice, including about home babysitters;
• ways of adapting housing (public and private) to make it easier for people to continue living at home, either through modifications to the building (ramps, handholds, etc.) or by supporting alternative forms of living (intergenerational, Abbeyfield, etc.). Possible reorganisations of work, e.g. in home care, can also be considered in this thinking exercise.

Leading authority: Minister of Health and Welfare

Based on a meta-analysis of the various reports already made on the non-use of social rights (CBCS, Health Observatory, etc.), formulate concrete proposals with a view to:

• the automation of rights by digitising and automating data transfer (while respecting privacy) and the automatic proactive granting of a right by the competent public services;
• the implementation of the harmonised social statutes whereby derived rights are automatically granted based on social status in several Brussels areas of competence (social energy and transport tariffs; reduction for sports and culture; various tax exemptions; access to social housing, etc.).

In doing so, efforts should be made to minimise the impact of automation on the digital divide.

Leading authority: Minister of Health and Welfare

To better meet the needs of the population in light of the socio-demographic evolutions that will occur in the Region, it is necessary to ensure greater coherence in the policies implemented, but also to adapt the range of services offered. Starting from the existing policy initiatives and plans of the different competent entities and the Brussels States General on health and well-being, it is necessary to:

• elaborate programming of the offer of policy initiatives on welfare, health and assistance to persons;
• and make up a corresponding plan of the budgetary resources needed to develop this offer in the medium and long term.

Leading authority: Minister of Health and Welfare