datum: 24.3.2022

On 9 December 2021, the Slovenian Parliament adopted the long-term care act, opening the way for the development of a modern system of integrated and locally organized long-term care in Slovenia. We are pleased to note that there are many solutions in the act that were presented and disseminated in Slovenia by our journal. Throughout the twenty-four years of its publication, the priority was given to articles on long-term care. We have published over five hundred research articles, reports on foreign and national good practices and policy documents on this content. In 2010, 2017 and 2020, when various proposals of the Slovenian long-term care act were in public discussion, we devoted a lot of space to the analysis of appropriate and inappropriate solutions in them and together with expert partners gave a statement about our opinion on the proposal. In view of Slovenia's needs and opportunities and the development achievements of care across Europe, we would expect some more ambitious solutions, especially in integrating formal with informal care and involving the local community in organizing care for its inhabitants.

Financially, the act combines the insurance principle in the share of current contributions for care in pension and health insurance, and the remaining part is provided by the state budget. In Slovenia, this kind of system was introduced in the pension system some time ago and it works effectively. In the future the law envisages the transition to the insurance principle only. In the coming years, state and local administration will have to introduce the system based on the adopted law and provide improvements where it is vague or deficient. Our field of expertise – along with our journal - is faced with the task of developing modern programs and methods for the humane, financial, and human sustainable care of a growing ageing population, when most aged persons need assistance in activities of daily living.

The Covid-19 pandemic is still an outstanding topic of research and other articles in this issue. Articles on the development and diversity of institutional care, on the knowledge of nursing students about urinary incontinence, auto ethnographic story with analysis of the experience of dementia in a family and other contributions also relate to long-term care.

Complete journal together with abstracts in English is published on the Anton Trstenjak Institute’s website.