The purpose of the toolkit is to assist all public authorities in Europe involved in the programming and implementation of EU Structural Funds (and other relevant funds) to make decisions which will help to improve the lives of more than a million European citizens currently living in institutional care; and to modernise care and support systems by ensuring that respect for human rights and equality are at the heart of reforms. Structural Funds have the potential to support the development of quality family-based and community-based alternatives to institutional care.
The move away from institutional care is a complex process, which requires the development of quality services in the community, the planned closure of long-stay residential institutions and the transfer of resources from the institutional system to the new services. The toolkit aims to explain how EU funds can support national, regional and local authorities in designing and implementing structural reforms to develop quality family-based and community-based alternatives. The toolkit explicitly deals with the European Social Fund (ESF) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), but it aims to apply also to the programming and implementation of the European Agricultural and Rural Development Fund (EARDF) and the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA).
