CONCEPTUAL-FRAMEWORK FOR DEVELOPMENT OF LONG-TERM-CARE POLICY .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 commited; (4) mobilizin g resources. A conceptual scheme for LTC planning could draw on each o f these four structural elements. But they might prove to be a set of separate concepts only linked to each other intuitively, unless they a re linked through action processes. The total number of reciprocal rel ationships between the four planning elements is 12. We have therefore identified 12 different action processes to be examined whenever LTC planning is undertaken. These processes allow information from the fou r structural elements to circulate between them. For example, priority , organization and objectives are sources of information when choosing criteria for the allocation of resources. Thus the processes form bri dges between the planning elements. These bridges must be used wheneve r planning is undertaken in order to ensure that all the elements are given equal weight. Whichever planning element is used as a starting p oint for LTC planning, the process knits the structural elements toget her into a whole. Using our conceptual scheme as a guide, planners can cover the whole field of LTC that it represents.