Paper short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Galician nursing home system and to explore the reforms carried out by the different public administrations in the last 4 years, using a mixed methodology that combines documentary analysis and in-depth interviews.

Paper long abstract:

Nursing homes were one of the epicenters of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spanish territory. After the first year of the pandemic, 30,103 people living in nursing homes had died from COVID-19, representing 41.7% of total deaths from Covid-19. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed some of the structural problems of the Spanish nursing home system: problems of intergovernmental governance and social and health care coordination, understaffed social care staff, job precarity, oversized centers, etc. All this in a multilevel governance model, in which there are as many nursing home systems as there are regional governments. But the pandemic has also accelerated the process of rethinking the Spanish nursing home model, promoting political measures to advance the process of deinstitutionalization of care.

The aim of this communication is twofold. First, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Galician nursing home system is analyzed, using a mixed methodology that combines macro -through statistical techniques and documentary review- and micro analysis -through interviews with workers. Next, the measures deployed by the Galician regional government to reform the nursing home system in the post-covid era are explored, using documentary analysis and interviews with key informants. It concludes with a descriptive analysis of the CAM programme of the Diputación Provincial de Lugo, a provincial system of mini-residences located in rural areas that is presented as an alternative to the regional model. The conclusions highlight the ambiguous and uncertain advances in social policy that have been made in the last four years.