Support for informal care of older people
Support for informal care is considered more cost-effective than substitute services. However, the costs do not include the costs of services provided to care recipients, nor do they include all costs of services provided to carers. The savings potential decreases when the services provided to informal care families increase. The actual total costs of the support should be established.
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Scope of the audit
- Achievement of the financial objectives set for support for informal care of older people.
- Attractiveness of informal care support in the different wellbeing services counties.
- Services supporting informal carers in their care duties.
- Practices for granting informal care support.
Key findings
- Deficiencies in cost data on informal care support make it difficult to estimate savings.
- Data gaps complicate data-driven management in informal care support.
- Differences between the wellbeing services counties highlight the need to harmonise the regulation of informal care support.
- Differences in service provision within counties increase the inequality of recipients of informal care support.
- Large numbers of clients weaken the monitoring of the situations of informal care families.
Briefly
Support for informal care consists of the services provided to the care recipient and of the care allowance, days of leave and services supporting care work provided to the carer. The aim of the support is to promote the wellbeing of the care recipient, enable safe living at home and generate savings compared with substitute services.
However, there is no comprehensive information on the actual costs of informal care support, as data on the costs of social and health services is deficient, and the total costs of informal care support do not include all costs of the services granted to informal care families. The practices for granting the support are uniform within each wellbeing services county, but the monitoring of informal care families varies from one county to another. There are differences between the counties in both the interpretation of the eligibility criteria and the application of the results of the indicators assessing the service need and functional capacity. Within the wellbeing services counties, the accessibility of services for informal care families varies depending on the place of residence.
There is no comprehensive data on the total costs of informal care support.
The number of informal care families was
50–280
per designated worker in the wellbeing services counties in 2024
In Finland, there were more than
31,000
informal care recipients aged 65 and over in 2024
Recommendations of the National Audit Office
The costs of support for informal care of older people should be made more transparent to make it possible to verify and calculate cost savings reliably. The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and the Ministry of Finance should establish the actual total costs of informal care support and ensure that the costs are monitored in a uniform manner both at the national level and at the level of wellbeing services counties.
The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and the Ministry of Finance should ensure that the wellbeing services counties and the City of Helsinki have an adequate information base for decision-making concerning the support for informal care of older people.
The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare should promote the national harmonisation of statistics and data structures related to informal care support as well as data quality assurance.
The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health should specify the provisions concerning the eligibility criteria for the lowest care allowance under the Act on Support for Informal Care in order to ensure that support for informal care is granted on equitable grounds at the national level.
The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health should set national quantitative targets for the coverage of support for informal care of older people in order to efficiently steer and develop the informal care support scheme and to achieve potential cost savings.
Timing of follow-up
The follow-up of the audit will be carried out in 2028.
Contact persons
Olli Karsio
Senior Auditor
Performance audit
Taina Rintala
Performance Audit Counsellor, D.Soc.Sc., LL.D.
Performance audit
Audit areas: Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, Ministry of Social Affairs and Health