Various societal developments are leading to the growing demand for personal and household services (PHS). Currently PHS account for about 8 million jobs in the EU (4% of total employment). Care activities (e.g. childcare, assistance to older people and persons with disabilities, etc.) make up 63% of PHS. The remaining 37% are non-care activities (e.g. cleaning, cooking, laundry, etc.).

As the importance of Personal and Household services is growing, there is also a growing need to develop policies supporting it, including policies regulating employment relations, quality standards, etc. The lack or limited amount of supportive policies can lead to more undeclared labour, discrimination regarding the levels of rights and protection that applies for both the workers and the recipients of the service and many other critical issues.

A new EU-funded project, ‘Advancing Personal and Household Services (Ad-PHS)’ (Grant agreement no. VP/2018/013/0003), is aimed at tackling this challenge. Its main goal is to create a single-point-of contact to support, guide and provide advice to Public Authorities in the development of their PHS policies. The aim is to lead to the creation of a platform of relevant PHS stakeholders at EU level.

Over the period of 18 months, the project partners:

• European Association of Service Providers for Persons with Disabilities (EASPD)
• Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main Institute for Economics, Culture and Labour (IWAK)
• European Federation for Services to Individuals (EFSI)
• European Federation for Family Employment and Home Care (EFFE)
• UNI Europa
• European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions (EFFAT)
• DIESIS COOP

will contribute to:

• Improved access to tailored guidance for public authorities and key stakeholders
• Increased awareness about rights & obligations of workers and employers
• More effective social dialogue
• Higher professionalisation of jobs
• Better cooperation between public authorities and key stakeholders at local, regional & national levels
• More structured cooperation between key stakeholders at European Level

The Consortium, among other activities, will:

• conduct research on the state of play on PHS policies in 21 EU Member States,
• develop tailored guidance for each of the selected countries,
• organise 21 national events (workshops and seminars) and with relevant stakeholders with the aim of gathering and disseminating information on national level
• organise a European Conference with the aim of creating a European Platform of PHS stakeholders.

The project’s consortium kicked-off the project on 9th-10th of January with a meeting in Brussels.

An Advisory Board for the project will be set up, involving different stakeholder organisations.