Poland enacted a comprehensive law on June 11, 2026, to overhaul senior policy, integrate long-term care systems, and establish county-level coordinators and a senior voucher for citizens aged 65 and over. <\/p>\n
The legal basis for the discussed issue is the Act of June 11, 2026, on older persons and the coordination of long-term care. The act aims to organize and integrate areas that previously operated in dispersion: senior policy and the long-term care system. The regulation introduces common definitions for the health and social assistance sectors, establishes long-term care coordinators at the poviat level, strengthens the body for senior policy, and creates the legal basis for the senior voucher\u2014a new benefit for people aged 65 and over. The act responds to demographic challenges that will deepen in the coming decades; by 2060, the senior population will grow to approximately 11.9 million.<\/p>\n
Older people constitute a significant group of long-term care recipients. In 2024, the number of people aged 60 and over reached nearly 10 million, corresponding to 26.6 percent of the population. As many as 62 percent of seniors indicated long-term health problems or chronic illnesses, with over 107,000 older patients using long-term care in the health system and over 49,000 places in social welfare homes allocated to older people.<\/p>\n
Forecasts are unequivocal: by 2060, the senior population will grow to approximately 11.9 million, representing nearly 40 percent of the population, and the number of people aged 85 and over will double from 0.84 million to 1.7 million. According to the “Demographic Situation of Poland” report, the number of people aged 80 and over will increase from 1.6 million in 2023 to 3.6 million in 2060, with particularly rapid growth occurring in the fourth decade of the century.<\/p>\n
In the “Strategic Review of Long-Term Care in Poland” report prepared by the World Bank under the National Recovery Plan milestone A69G, key challenges addressed by the act were identified. The scale of the problem is significant: formal care covers only 20 percent of those in need, while 80 percent of care is provided informally by families. In Poland, there are only 0.5 long-term care workers per 100 older people compared to an EU average of 3.8, and public spending on this purpose stands at 0.8 percent of GDP compared to about 1.5 percent of GDP in OECD countries.<\/p>\n
The foundation of the regulation is the introduction of three definitions whose absence previously led to interpretive inconsistency: older person, informal care, and informal caregiver. Definitions of an older person aged 60 and over and senior policy were adopted unchanged from the act on older persons, aligning with United Nations and World Health Organization practices.<\/p>\n
The body for senior policy is designated as the minister competent for social security or the Government Plenipotentiary for Senior Policy. This body receives a significantly broader range of analytical, coordinating, and reporting tasks, including monitoring long-term care, preparing reports on the situation of older persons, executing the Senior Voucher Program, and supervising its implementation by municipalities.<\/p>\n
Coordination of tasks related to long-term care will become a mandatory own task of the poviat. The coordinator by operation of law will be the head of the poviat family assistance center, or the head of the municipal social welfare center in a city with poviat rights. Coordinators will analyze needs, cooperate with medical entities, and provide advice to individuals requiring support and their caregivers.<\/p>\n
The act introduces a uniform cooperation mechanism between medical entities and social welfare units regarding the transfer of information about individuals who likely require long-term care, particularly upon hospital discharge or health deterioration. The receiving entity is obliged to take steps to determine the scope of support and inform about the use of data within 7 days.<\/p>\n
The act introduces the Senior Voucher Program, implemented by municipalities as a commissioned task from government administration. The senior voucher is a non-monetary benefit for people who have turned 65 and have unmet needs in basic everyday life activities, operating outside the social welfare system. The average monthly income of the senior over the last three months cannot exceed 3,410 PLN, and the senior must reside in Poland.<\/p>\n
The voucher will not be available to individuals using the supporting benefit, specialized care services in support centers, care services or personal assistance co-financed from government programs, or round-the-clock care in social welfare homes. The program will be implemented in three-year cycles, evaluated every two years, and financed from the state budget through targeted grants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Poland enacted a comprehensive law on June 11, 2026, to overhaul senior policy, integrate long-term care systems, and establish county-level coordinators and a senior voucher for citizens aged 65 and over. Legal Framework and Demographic Challenges The legal basis for the discussed issue is the Act of June 11, 2026, on older persons and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-and-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}