Stakeholder cooperation

INTRODUCTION: Societies today are very complex. Effective and successful implementation of care policies is needed. The concept of stakeholder approach is about creating tools and instruments to organise the communication between all parties involved. AIM: EASPD organised in 2006 the conference ‘ageing and disability—disabled people are ageing, ageing people are getting disabled’ in Austria. For the first time organisations from the care sector for ageing people and from the disability sector were working together to discuss their concepts and their experience and to develop strategies. In this conference main results of this cooperation will be analysed. RESULTS: The care sector for elderly people in many countries is now facing the same problems as the disability sector 20 years ago: services are mainly medical oriented, the main solutions are care homes, services are social not right driven, the choice for individuals is very limited, … . We will come up with some suggestions to bridge the gap between the disability sector and the care sector in order to equalise the opportunities for elderly people with care needs.