EU Funding and Long-Term Care Reform in Latvia: Turning Investment into Sustainable Change

A new community service can open because project funding makes the initial investment possible. Staff can be trained, new models can be tested and people who previously had few alternatives to institutional care can receive support closer to home. The more difficult question comes later: what happens when the project period ends?

This is one of the most important strategic questions facing Latvia’s long-term-care reform. European Union funding has become deeply embedded in the country’s development of social services, including community-based provision, professional social work, palliative support, infrastructure and new forms of care. Across the Latvia Ageing, Long-Term Care & Community Support Knowledge Hub, many of the reforms examined in earlier articles are connected in some way to this wider investment environment.

The scale is significant. Under Latvia’s 2021–2027 EU Cohesion Policy programme, substantial welfare-sector investment is directed towards social services, with approximately €159.1 million allocated across relevant programmes combining European Social Fund Plus, European Regional Development Fund and national co-financing. Latvia’s 2026–2027 Social Services Improvement and Development Plan alone has €32.2 million available in 2026 and €25.7 million in 2027, with the majority in both years linked to EU policy instruments and other externally co-financed projects.

Yet funding should not be confused with reform. Money can create capacity, but sustainable long-term care requires that successful services become embedded in ordinary municipal and national systems. The central challenge is therefore to convert temporary investment into permanent capability.

EU funding is an accelerator rather than Latvia’s long-term-care system

Latvia’s social-care responsibilities remain defined by national law and divided between the state and municipalities. EU funds do not replace that architecture.

Municipalities remain responsible for ensuring many social services for their residents, including substantial elements of care at home and community support. The state funds or co-funds defined services and population groups, while the Ministry of Welfare sets national policy and legal frameworks. Providers operate through public, municipal, private and non-governmental arrangements within that system.

European funding sits alongside these responsibilities as a development mechanism.

It can enable Latvia to expand services faster than ordinary budgets might otherwise permit. It can fund training, infrastructure, pilots, methodologies, digital systems and time-limited service delivery. It can also encourage reform priorities by directing investment towards community-based care, inclusion, service quality and resilience.

The distinction matters because project funding has a different logic from recurrent care funding.

A project has an approved period, budget, eligible costs, objectives and reporting requirements. Long-term care has no natural project end date. A person who requires daily support after a project closes still requires daily support.

Sustainable reform therefore depends on the point at which project logic becomes service logic.

The 2021–2027 Cohesion programme supports a broad social-service transformation

Latvia’s current EU funding period does not rely on one long-term-care programme. The investment is distributed across several measures that affect different parts of the social-service system.

Relevant programmes include support for increasing access to community-based social services, improving service quality and efficiency, developing professional and modern social work, strengthening palliative-care arrangements, improving state social-care centre models and creating community-based service infrastructure.

This breadth is strategically important.

Long-term-care reform cannot be achieved simply by funding more frontline service hours. New community models require physical infrastructure. Workforce development requires training and supervision. Better service planning requires stronger data. Deinstitutionalisation requires alternative housing and support. Palliative care requires coordination between social and health services.

EU funding can therefore act across the reform system rather than at one point within it.

The risk is fragmentation between programmes. If each investment stream is managed primarily around its own project indicators, Latvia can end up with multiple successful projects that do not form one sustainable operating model.

Governance must therefore connect investment streams around shared outcomes.

Community-based services remain one of the clearest investment priorities

Latvia’s long-term policy direction has increasingly favoured community-based alternatives where people do not require institutional care. EU funding has played an important role in making those alternatives more available.

The current Cohesion Policy framework includes measure 4.3.5.1, specifically aimed at increasing access to community-based social services and improving long-term-care availability, efficiency and resilience.

In 2026, one open call made €9.02 million available for community-based social rehabilitation and respite services, including approximately €7.67 million from ESF+ and €1.35 million in national co-financing. Eligible applicants included municipalities and private social-service providers such as associations and foundations.

The target groups in that particular call were defined rather than universal. They included adults with Group I or II disability associated with mental impairments, children with functional impairments living in families and relevant relatives or informal carers.

This distinction is important. EU-supported community care should not be described as a general new entitlement available to every person with long-term-care needs.

What the programme does demonstrate is the direction of travel: practical support aimed at strengthening self-care skills, independence and participation while also providing respite and rehabilitation for families.

This connects closely with wider independence and community inclusion objectives, even though individual funding calls may target specific groups rather than older people generally.

A municipality gains a new service but also a future funding obligation

A Latvian municipality participates in an EU-supported project to expand a community-based respite and rehabilitation service. During the project period, staff are recruited, families gain access to support and demand becomes visible because people who previously relied entirely on relatives begin using the service.

The project performs well. Families report that respite helps them sustain care at home, while some people using the service develop greater self-care and community-participation skills.

As the project approaches its end, the municipality faces a different decision. Continuing the service requires recurrent expenditure that was not previously part of its ordinary social-services budget.

Closing the service would technically complete the project but weaken the reform outcome. Continuing it unchanged may also be unrealistic if the original project model is too expensive for municipal funding.

The stronger response is to begin sustainability planning well before project closure. Leaders identify which elements produce the strongest outcomes, estimate recurrent staffing and premises costs, examine demand and consider whether the service should be continued directly, purchased from a provider or redesigned.

The investment has succeeded only when the municipality can decide what happens next on the basis of evidence rather than discovering at project end that a valuable service has no financial future.

EU funding has supported Latvia’s shift away from institutional dependence

Much of Latvia’s social-service reform needs to be understood against the longer trajectory of deinstitutionalisation and development of community living.

EU investment has helped finance community infrastructure, group homes, day services, rehabilitation and other alternatives that can allow people with disabilities to live outside large institutions.

This investment is more than construction.

A building can create the physical possibility of community support. It does not create a functioning community service by itself.

Every new community setting requires recurrent staffing, management, transport, utilities, maintenance, professional support and access to wider healthcare and community infrastructure. It also needs sufficient service demand to remain viable.

This creates a distinction between capital sustainability and service sustainability.

ERDF-supported infrastructure may remain physically available for many years. The service operating within it requires annual budgets.

That is why governance and leadership need to engage with EU-funded infrastructure before construction or refurbishment is complete. Leaders should understand who will operate the service, how it will be staffed, what demand it will serve and how recurrent costs will be met.

Workforce investment is as important as service infrastructure

Latvia cannot expand long-term-care capacity without people able to deliver it.

The 2026–2027 Social Services Improvement and Development Plan includes substantial professional-development activity: training for social-work specialists, family assistants and carers; regional and thematic seminars; e-learning; supervision; methodological development and leadership activity.

These investments are particularly important because community-based reform changes workforce requirements.

Institutional care concentrates staff and people within one location. Community services disperse work across homes, apartments, day centres and municipalities. Staff require greater autonomy, stronger coordination skills and often broader understanding of risk, rehabilitation and person-centred practice.

Funding training without changing the surrounding employment environment, however, can produce limited long-term value.

A worker who completes high-quality training may still leave because of pay, workload, travel or lack of career progression. A municipality may build specialist expertise and then lose it through turnover.

This is why workforce planning should sit alongside workforce-development investment.

EU funding can improve skills. Workforce sustainability requires Latvia to retain and deploy those skills after the funded programme closes.

The 2026–2027 plan shows how EU funding and national policy are becoming intertwined

Latvia’s Social Services Improvement and Development Plan for 2026 and 2027 provides a useful example of how external investment increasingly supports ordinary national reform priorities.

The plan includes expansion of community-based services, development of palliative care, stronger workforce competence, family-like approaches in social-care centres, improved cooperation with health and municipal structures and measures to attract and motivate staff.

Implementation funding available under the plan totals €32.2 million in 2026 and €25.7 million in 2027. Approximately €28 million in 2026 and €22.5 million in 2027 relate to EU policy instruments and other externally co-financed programmes.

These proportions show how important European investment is to the pace of reform.

They also create a strategic obligation to distinguish between activities that are inherently time-limited and services that will require continued public funding.

Training programmes may end once a workforce cohort has completed them. A new methodology can continue being used after its development project finishes. A digital platform may require maintenance but not the original level of development spending.

A daily care service is different.

Where projects create recurring entitlements, expectations or service demand, sustainability planning must identify the future funding route.

Palliative care shows how project funding can support system integration

Latvia’s development of palliative care at a person’s residence illustrates another use of EU investment: improving the interface between health and social support.

The 2026–2027 plan includes further development of multidisciplinary palliative care, including pilot respite, short-term care and psychosocial support for people receiving palliative care and their relatives. A relevant programme has €7 million identified, combining €5.95 million of ESF+ funding with €1.05 million of state-budget funding.

This kind of investment is valuable because it can test service components that do not fit neatly within one existing budget.

Respite may support family sustainability. Psychosocial support may improve quality of life. Training can strengthen provider competence. Short-term care can reduce pressure where a family can no longer provide continuous support.

The evidence challenge is to determine which elements should become permanent after testing.

A pilot should therefore be designed with future decisions in mind. It should establish:

• who uses each component and at what intensity;
• what outcomes change for patients and families;
• what workforce and infrastructure are required;
• which organisation should hold continuing responsibility;
• what recurrent cost would follow wider implementation; and
• whether integration reduces pressure elsewhere in the pathway.

The project period becomes a learning environment rather than a temporary service bubble.

EU investment should create institutional capability, not only project capability

One of the recurring weaknesses of externally funded reform internationally is the creation of excellent project teams that disappear when funding stops.

People are recruited specifically to manage reporting, innovation or programme delivery. They accumulate expertise in service design, data and partnership working. When the project closes, that capability may be lost.

Latvia can strengthen the return on investment by deliberately transferring project knowledge into permanent institutions.

This includes methodologies, training materials, digital workflows, outcome measures and partnership arrangements. It also includes the less visible knowledge held by project staff about what implementation actually required.

The Governance Maturity Assessment can help organisations examine whether responsibility and learning are embedded beyond individual projects. It is not specific to Latvia or EU funding rules, but the underlying principle is relevant: organisational maturity is demonstrated when knowledge survives personnel and programme changes.

National bodies and municipalities should therefore ask not only whether project milestones were achieved, but what permanent capability now exists because the project happened.

Municipal co-financing creates both ownership and inequality risks

Many EU-funded programmes combine European finance with national or municipal contributions.

Co-financing can strengthen ownership because participating organisations have a direct financial stake in implementation. It also ensures that EU funding is integrated with domestic public expenditure rather than operating entirely separately.

However, municipal financial capacity is not uniform.

A larger municipality may find it easier to co-finance a project, recruit administrative staff and absorb recurrent costs. A smaller municipality with an ageing population and narrow tax base may face greater difficulty even where need is substantial.

This creates a possible paradox: areas with the greatest structural need may have the least capacity to participate in complex investment programmes.

Project design therefore needs to consider administrative and financial accessibility as well as formal eligibility.

Regional cooperation may offer one response. Several municipalities could potentially share specialist capacity or provider arrangements where maintaining separate services would be inefficient.

National support can also help ensure that EU funding does not unintentionally widen territorial differences.

A rural municipality cannot treat project administration as free capacity

A smaller municipality in eastern Latvia identifies a strong need for expanded community support. An EU funding call aligns well with local priorities, but preparing the proposal, managing procurement, maintaining evidence and reporting outcomes require significant administrative capacity.

The social-service team is already stretched by operational casework. Moving several experienced staff into project administration would weaken frontline delivery.

The municipality therefore assesses not only whether it is eligible to apply but whether it has the capability to deliver the project safely.

It explores shared technical support, partnership with an experienced provider and clearer allocation of project-management responsibilities. The service model is also designed around the scale of local demand rather than replicating a larger urban project.

This results in a more modest intervention but a more sustainable one.

The scenario illustrates a wider funding principle. Access to money is not the same as capacity to use it well. EU programmes create value only when implementation demands are proportionate to the organisations expected to deliver them.

Infrastructure investment needs a workforce and service model behind it

Capital funding can be politically and operationally attractive because new buildings and renovated environments are visible outcomes.

Long-term-care sustainability is less visible.

A new day centre requires enough people to use it, sufficient staff, transport connections and a realistic operating budget. A group home requires continuing care and support. A family-like unit within a state social-care centre requires a workforce able to deliver a different style of care rather than merely a redesigned interior.

The strongest capital projects therefore begin with the operating model.

Leaders should understand:

• which population the infrastructure will serve;
• the likely level of demand over time;
• the required workforce and competence;
• how the service connects with existing local pathways;
• who will fund recurrent operation; and
• what outcome justifies the investment.

This approach reduces the risk of creating infrastructure first and searching for a sustainable service model later.

Digital investment has similar sustainability requirements

Latvia’s digital social-service development, including DigiSoc, represents another form of reform investment where the initial build is only part of the lifecycle.

Platforms require upgrades, cybersecurity, user support, integration and continued governance. Municipal staff need training. Data standards change. Existing systems may need to be retired gradually.

EU-supported digital development can fund transformation, but the resulting infrastructure becomes an ongoing public asset and responsibility.

Sustainability planning should therefore include recurrent technical costs from the beginning.

It should also consider whether digitalisation reduces workload elsewhere. If a new platform removes duplicate recording and improves information exchange, part of its value may appear through productivity rather than direct financial savings.

The quality of implementation matters more than the fact that the technology was funded.

Outcome evidence should determine which funded models survive

Projects often have required output indicators: people participating, services delivered, training completed or infrastructure created.

These measures demonstrate that the project occurred.

They do not necessarily demonstrate that the reform should continue.

For community long-term care, stronger evaluation examines whether people maintained independence, avoided unnecessary institutional support, increased participation, experienced better continuity or received more appropriate care. Family-carer outcomes may also matter where respite and rehabilitation are intended to sustain informal care.

This links investment with quality data and performance metrics.

The Quality Dashboard Builder can help organisations structure evidence across activity, workforce, quality and outcomes. It does not define EU or Latvian reporting requirements, but it illustrates why investment evaluation should move beyond delivery counts.

A project that serves fewer people but produces significant sustained outcomes may have stronger long-term value than one that reports very high activity without changing pathways.

Sustainability needs to be tested before the final funding year

One of the simplest ways to improve project sustainability is also one of the hardest: begin planning for the end near the beginning.

Waiting until the final months to ask who will fund continuation leaves limited options.

For services with recurrent costs, leaders should model future funding while implementation evidence is still emerging. Early modelling can show whether the service needs redesign, whether demand assumptions were realistic and what level of municipal or national expenditure would be required.

The Digital Twin Scenario Modeller provides a general framework for testing demand, workforce and capacity assumptions. It is not an EU funding tool or Latvian budget model, but it demonstrates the value of exploring different future scenarios before commitments become fixed.

A municipality might model what happens if demand grows by 20%, if workforce costs rise, if national co-financing changes or if a service absorbs people previously supported through another pathway.

The purpose is not to predict the future perfectly. It is to avoid discovering too late that the successful pilot has an unaffordable operating model.

Successful EU projects can expose unmet demand rather than reduce it

An important feature of social-care reform is that increasing service availability can reveal need that was previously hidden.

Before a respite service exists, family carers may simply cope without it. Before a community rehabilitation programme opens, people may remain at home with limited support or move into institutional care. Before a group home is created, demand for supported community living may be difficult to quantify.

A successful project can therefore increase apparent demand.

This should not automatically be interpreted as project failure or uncontrolled service expansion. It may represent improved access to previously unmet need.

Governance should distinguish between:

• demand created by genuine unmet need becoming visible;
• demand resulting from unclear eligibility or service design;
• demand transferred from another part of the system; and
• temporary project participation that does not justify permanent provision.

This analysis matters because sustainability decisions should be based on the real population need revealed by implementation.

A project succeeds so well that demand becomes the problem

A municipality launches a community rehabilitation programme with EU support for adults with defined disabilities. Initial projections suggest a relatively small cohort.

Once referral routes become established, demand grows quickly. Families who previously managed without formal support begin applying. Health and social-service professionals identify people who could benefit. The service develops a positive local reputation.

By the second year, the programme is operating near capacity.

Project leaders could interpret this simply as evidence of success. Municipal leaders need a wider view.

They analyse who is using the service, which outcomes are being achieved, what happens to people unable to access it and whether demand is likely to persist. They also examine whether parts of the programme could be integrated into existing services rather than continuing as a standalone project structure.

The result may still require additional municipal funding. But the decision is now based on demonstrated need and outcomes rather than on the assumption that project closure should automatically return spending to zero.

Public procurement and provider relationships affect whether reform survives

EU funding frequently involves municipalities working with external providers, associations or foundations.

These organisations can bring specialist expertise, local relationships and flexibility. They may also be particularly capable of developing innovative community services.

The challenge comes when project-funded provider relationships end.

If the municipality intends to continue purchasing the service, it needs an appropriate future contractual or procurement route. If the service will become municipal provision, knowledge and workforce may need to transfer. If a different provider later wins the work, continuity for people using the service requires careful management.

Organisations considering the evidence required within such provider relationships can use the Commissioner Evidence Builder as a general structure for linking service expectations, evidence and outcomes. It is not a Latvian procurement instrument, but the principle is relevant: future purchasing should preserve what the project proved to be valuable rather than merely purchasing the same activity.

Reform can otherwise become dependent on one temporary funding agreement rather than embedded within the wider provider system.

National government needs visibility of which reforms municipalities can sustain

Municipal responsibility means that long-term reform ultimately encounters local fiscal reality.

A national programme may successfully stimulate a service model across several municipalities while revealing that some can sustain it and others cannot. This information should travel back into national policy.

If the model is considered essential to equitable access, relying indefinitely on different municipal financial capacities may undermine the reform objective. National co-financing, revised responsibilities or a common funding mechanism may eventually be required.

Conversely, not every successful local project needs to become a national entitlement.

Some models may be appropriate only where demand, geography or provider capacity support them.

The governance question is therefore not simply whether a project worked locally. It is whether its underlying function should be:

• continued locally;
• adapted regionally;
• scaled nationally;
• integrated into another service; or
• allowed to end because the pilot did not justify permanent provision.

Making those distinctions is part of policy maturity.

EU funding should reduce dependence on future EU funding

There is an apparent paradox at the heart of sustainable reform.

EU funding is most valuable when it helps create a stronger system that is less dependent on repeated project intervention for its basic operation.

This does not mean Latvia should stop using European investment. Future programmes will continue to offer opportunities for innovation, infrastructure and development.

It means ordinary services should not require continual rebadging as new projects simply to remain open.

A mature funding model uses EU investment for transformation:

developing infrastructure, testing new approaches, training the workforce, creating digital capability, generating evidence and enabling transition.

Once a service is shown to be necessary and effective, the recurrent funding question should increasingly be answered through ordinary national or municipal arrangements.

This separates reform capital from operating dependence.

The 2028–2030 transition will require careful policy planning

The current EU programming period formally covers 2021–2027, although project implementation can continue beyond the end of 2027 in some measures. Several Latvian social-service initiatives already have implementation horizons extending to 2028 or 2029.

This creates a transition period rather than a single cliff edge.

Latvia should use that time to identify which investments have created permanent service obligations and which were genuinely temporary development activities.

The strongest transition planning should consider:

future municipal budgets, national co-financing, workforce availability, provider-market sustainability, infrastructure maintenance, digital operating costs and the evidence supporting continuation.

It should also distinguish successful reform from sunk-cost thinking. A service should not continue indefinitely merely because substantial EU investment has already been made. Continued funding should be justified by current need and outcomes.

Equally, a service should not disappear merely because the funding line that created it has ended.

The purpose of evaluation is to distinguish between those two situations.

What Latvia’s experience offers internationally

Latvia is not unusual in using European structural and social funds to accelerate social-service reform, but its municipal structure and continuing transition towards stronger community provision make the sustainability question particularly visible.

The transferable lessons extend beyond EU member states.

First, time-limited investment and recurrent care funding should be treated as different financial problems from the beginning.

Second, infrastructure is sustainable only where a viable operating model exists behind it.

Third, projects should generate permanent institutional knowledge rather than temporary project expertise.

Fourth, evaluation should test outcomes and future affordability alongside delivery milestones.

Fifth, successful reform can reveal previously hidden demand. Policymakers need to distinguish increased access from uncontrolled expansion.

Finally, external funding works best when it strengthens domestic institutions rather than creating parallel service systems.

The mechanism may differ in countries without EU Cohesion Policy funding. National innovation grants, philanthropic investment or regional development programmes create similar questions. The principle remains the same: transformation funding creates lasting value only when ordinary systems are capable of carrying forward what works.

Conclusion

EU funding has given Latvia an important opportunity to accelerate changes that would otherwise be slower and more difficult: expanding community-based services, developing the workforce, improving palliative support, strengthening infrastructure, supporting digitalisation and testing new models of care. The scale of investment within the current Cohesion Policy period makes it a major influence on the direction of social-service reform.

The decisive test, however, lies beyond project delivery. Latvia needs to know which investments create durable outcomes, which services reveal genuine recurrent demand and which models municipalities and national government can sustain after external funding reduces or changes.

That requires sustainability planning before projects end, clear ownership of recurrent costs, stronger evidence about outcomes, realistic workforce modelling and governance that connects local experience with national policy. Successful pilots should neither become permanent automatically nor disappear automatically. They should earn continuation through demonstrated need, value and a viable operating model.

Latvia’s strongest use of EU investment will therefore be measured not by how much funding is absorbed, but by what remains when individual programmes close: stronger municipal capacity, more resilient community services, better-trained staff, useful infrastructure, improved data and people able to live with greater independence and support. When temporary finance creates permanent capability, investment becomes genuine system reform.