The project will examine how competence development can support sustainable workforce development in Nordic eldercare under conditions of labour shortages, increasing care needs, and growing organisational complexity. Across the Nordic countries, eldercare services are facing rising demand due to demographic change, while simultaneously struggling with shortages of skilled staff and an increasingly diverse workforce, including a growing share of employees with a migrant background. The challenges place new demands on both employees and organisational capacity within eldercare systems.
The project executed in collaboration with Roskilde University, Denmark. The project will produce a comparative, policy-oriented overview of competence development in eldercare across the Nordic countries and self-governing regions. The project will analyse how competence development interacts with work organisation, staffing structures, managerial capacity, recruitment and retention dynamics, and gendered and migrant labour patterns.
The project will consist of two main components. First, a scoping review of Nordic and selected international research and grey literature will identify key themes, patterns, and knowledge gaps related to competence development in eldercare. Second, a systematic mapping of national policies, programmes, and initiatives will provide a descriptive and comparative overview of how competence development is organised and supported across the Nordic countries. Particular attention will be paid to initiatives targeting employees with migrant backgrounds, untrained and trained staff, and frontline managers, as well as differences between care settings, municipal contexts, and urban and rural areas.
The findings are intended to support Nordic ministries, national authorities, and other key stakeholders by strengthening the evidence base for strategic competence development in eldercare and by facilitating Nordic knowledge exchange on how to build a resilient, skilled, and inclusive eldercare workforce.
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