In January 2022, the University of Hamburg hosted the second Meeting of the National Stakeholder Committee (NSC). The members of the NSC in Germany represent a wide range of different interest groups: Dr. Heidrun Mollenkopf representing the German Working Group of Senior Citizens Organizations (BAGSO), Herbert Düll representing the German Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (BMAS), Christian Heerdt representing the German Association for Old-Age Care (KDA) and Dietmar Erdmeier representing the United Service Worker Unions of Germany (Ver.di). After a change in the board Michael David from the German Welfare Association Diakonia has been announced the new representative of the German National Poverty Conference (NAK) and will support the NSC in future meetings.
Due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, the meeting took place as a virtual event. At the beginning of the meeting, Prof. Birgit Pfau-Effinger provided a brief overview of the current state of research in EUROSHIP and summarized the research activities of the last year. Afterwards Christopher Grages presented research findings from the comparative report on “Long-term care regimes in Europe” (Deliverable 7.1) of the Hamburg team. After that, Ralf Och introduced the concept and guideline of the life-course interviews that are currently conducted in Hamburg, Lübeck and Berlin by the German team. The participants contributed to a lively discussion about developments in long-term care policies and the life-course interviews. They made substantial recommendations and discussed challenges for the further research and national and cross-national analysis.
In the final part of the session, Birgit Pfau-Effinger gave an overview of the next steps of the research process during 2022. She said that the discussion with the stakeholders was very fruitful and that the team of the University of Hamburg appreciated the many insightful comments suggestions from the participants, which offered numerous relevant new inspirations and ideas for the next steps in the research process.
