Integration as ‘Boundary Redefinition Process’

Abstract

The system of long-term care (LTC) is intended to provide a set of health, social and personal care services to older people requiring support in their daily life. In this book it is approached as a field under construction, faced with increasing needs that cannot be adequately met at current level of service provision. These challenges do not only require a quantitative expansion of services, but also necessitate a qualitative reorganisation; integration, coordination and networking are considered the most promising principles in this regard (Billings and Leichsenring, 2005; Nies and Berman, 2004; Stein and Rieder, 2009; Williams and Sullivan, 2009; see in particular Chapters 1, 4, 5 and 15 in this book). These issues are also prominent within the INTERLINKS Framework for LTC (http://interlinks.euro.centre.org); the examination of the 135 key issues and of the numerous practice examples that illustrate trends towards more integrated or coordinated planning, organisation and delivery of LTC services clearly reveal this. The issue of integration and the question of the way it can be conceptualised are of particular interest here.