FRAME OF REFERENCE FOR THE ELABORATION OF POLICIES FOR LONG-TERM CAR .2. CONCEPTUAL-MODEL

Planning of long-term care (LTC) focusses on four themes: (1) developi ng priorities to reflect values; (2) setting up human service organiza tions governed by a set of rules and procedures; (3) choosing objectiv es to which participants and organizations are committed; (4) mobilizi ng resources. A conceptual scheme for LTC planning could draw on each of these four structural elements, But they might prove to be a set of separate concepts only linked to each other intuitively, unless they are linked through action processes. The total number of reciprocal re lationships between the four planning elements is 12. We have therefor e identified 12 different action processes to be examined whenever LTC planning is undertaken. These processes allow information from the fo ur structural elements to circulate between them. For example, priorit y, organization and objectives are sources of information when choosin g criteria for the allocation of resources. Thus the processes form br idges between the planning elements. These bridges must be used whenev er planning is undertaken in order to ensure that all the elements are given equal weight, Whichever planning element is used as a starting point for LTC planning, the process knits the structural elements toge ther into a whole. Using our conceptual scheme as a guide, planners ca n cover the whole field of LTC that it represents.