Some Ethical and Legal Challenges in Effective Long-Term Care System Development

The Russian social protection system of recent years has been characterized by the chaotic nature of the ongoing reforms, which sometimes have the main task of solving momentary economic problems. An increase in the level of social benefits or the introduction of new ones occurs, as a rule, for the most active and dissatisfied part of the population. Thus, in 2019, under the influence of public associations of parents of disabled children, the compensation payment for this category of citizens was increased to 10,000 rubles, while the payment to caregivers for other categories of people in need (for example, elderly relatives) remained at the level of 1,200 rubles per month.

The obvious lack of general principles for the provision of state aid based on ethical norms understandable to society causes discontent and distrust of the population. The paper attempts to point out the inconsistency of legislation with moral and ethical standards in the field of long-term care, identify shortcomings and develop some proposals for improving the current legislation.

The author suggests the following: 1) to support the idea implemented in pilot projects of a number of subjects of the Russian Federation to endow persons caring for relatives with the status of social workers; 2) to raise the amount of payments to unemployed able-bodied caregivers to the minimum wage, since compensation payments by their nature are designed to replace missing earnings; 3) to eliminate unjustified differentiation of payments depending on the status of persons in need of care; 4) to provide for the possibility of working on a part-time basis when providing care, setting fair limits taking into account the amount of compensation payments and income received, etc.

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