ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews recent research on developments in the organization of eldercare in the Czech Republic. It analyses the existing literature on developments in eldercare services before and after the fall of communism. The chapter outlines the historical developments in eldercare organization, and investigates the shifts in social services during the post-1989 transformation process. It identifies three main trends in current academic debates: negotiations between collective care and family or individualistic responsibilities; the deinstitutionalization of the eldercare system; and the shift from state-organized care to market services. The chapter focuses on three important issues: the role of family, deinstitutionalization and decentralization, and commodification of eldercare. It illuminates the family as a steady rock in eldercare provision in the Czech Republic, across decades and regimes. Historically, the Czech eldercare system developed from a phase of de-familialism through explicit familialism to implicit familialism and hybrid possibilities offering various types of eldercare from the state, the family, the marketplace, and medical services.
