Combining activity and economic efficiency: The view of Danish local policy actors on rehabilitation in elderly care

In the Danish welfare state, long-term care is a universal service that is run by the municipalities. The municipalities, although bound by a national legal framework, do have considerable autonomy concerning the concrete definition and organization of long-term care services. One of the newest “hot” concepts in Danish long-term care is (everyday-) rehabilitation of the frail elderly, which several municipalities have tried out in pilot projects and otherwise introduced over the last couple of years. The paper draws upon qualitative interviews with administrative leaders and local politicians in three Danish municipalities and discusses their understandings and expectations of the concept. A lot of the interviewees in the study, especially those from administration, refer to rehabilitation as a very promising concept within the field of elderly care. Rehabilitation is thereby presented as some kind of all-in-one solution everyone is profiting of: The older people would profit from a higher quality of living, that enables a more active and self-determined life. The municipalities (i.e. the public system) would be saving money, because the frail older people would need less care services. The paper provides a discourse analysis of the interviewees’ accounts, that shows how discourses on activity and economic efficiency have been combined in the Danish context.