Context
As Europe’s population ages, demand for long-term care is rising faster than the workforce that delivers it. Healthcare assistants provide the bulk of hands-on care in residential, institutional, and home settings, yet unlike nurses and other regulated health professions, no EU-level mechanism exists to compare their skills and qualifications. Job titles, training requirements, and recognition arrangements vary widely from one country to the next, leaving employers, training providers, and public authorities with few shared reference points to draw on.
Our Approach
Under the Building Competency and Recruitment Pathways for Long-Term Care in Europe (B-Care) project – funded by the Migration Partnership Facility (MPF) – Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP) developed the Common Competency Framework for Healthcare Assistants in Long-Term Care (CCF), comparing what these professionals should know, do, and demonstrate across five EU Member States: Austria, France, Greece, Ireland, and Malta.
- Comparative Mapping. The framework sets out where competency expectations converge and where meaningful differences remain across countries, without requiring any country to harmonize its national qualifications. The framework is a benchmark for employers and trainers to navigate a fragmented system.
- Employer-Informed Validation. Building on existing literature and research, the mapping builds on consultations with long-term care providers, employers, training actors, and public authorities, making the framework responsive to and grounding it in how the sector actually operates.
The framework is a reference for mapping curricula against core competency elements to surface gaps; as a tool for clarifying the competency profile employers and recruiters actually expect; as a compass for reviewing prior training or experience without replacing formal recognition procedures; as a benchmark for multi-country labor mobility cooperation; and as a foundation for bridging modules, interview guides, or assessment tools that individual countries can still build to their own context.
Looking Ahead
By establishing a common reference point for healthcare assistant competencies, the CCF lays the groundwork for more informed cooperation on skills recognition and workforce mobility in long-term care. How it gets used will keep varying by system – more regulated countries can compare incoming profiles without lowering standards, less formalized ones get a clearer basis for training design – and that flexibility is a feature, not a gap to be closed. The lessons from this mapping exercise can also help inform future labour mobility schemes in the sector, both within the five countries studied and beyond.
Read more about our work in this space.
To learn more or get involved, please contact:
Salvatore Petronella
Related Resources
- Common Competency Framework for Healthcare Assistants in Long-Term Care (MPF Resources)
- Building Competency and Recruitment Pathways for Long-Term Care in Europe – Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP)
