Privatization of elderly care and municipal responsibilities in Sweden

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It has been a one of characters in the Swedish Model that only municipality could be a care service provider. But we can find some big changes in the 90's. The municipal monopolistic condition of care services has changed though the ADEL reform (the reform for elderly care in 1992) and other administrative reform. Sweden has become a member of EU in 1995. It gave also a big influence to their elderly care system. The EU direction does not allow the municipal monopoly of care services.Purpose of my study is to clear following three points ; (1) how elderly care services have privatized in Sweden, (2) how municipalities' responsibility has changed, and (3) how social enterprises work in elderly care in Sweden as a new care provider.The results of my research are as follows ;(1)About 10% of elderly care services are supplied by private organizations in 2003 in Sweden. The amount of private supply is not so much compared with other countries, but most of private care providers are private companies (for profit).(2)Municipality continues to have responsibility to keep their service quality. They try to make some new systems for quality control.(3)Number of social enterprises is not so many in Sweden, compared with other countries. But we can find their possibilities in future. They can give a lot of satisfaction to service users. Employees enjoy working with their own responsibility to decide by themselves. And social enterprises contribute for society with many points.It seems that the Swedish Model has changed in many points even in elderly care system. On the other hand, we can find that some characters are still remained. For example, municipality still has a big responsibility to control care services. Another example is that labor union of care workers keep their equal working condition between municipal employees and private employees.