Research Project
InCAREgio
Innovative Arrangements for Care Provision in Structurally Weak Regions (InCAREgio)
This project examines innovative approaches to securing care services in rural and structurally disadvantaged regions, where the shortage of care workers is particularly acute. Drawing on case studies in eastern Brandenburg, it investigates the conditions and potential of locally developed care arrangements and puts forward proposals for their stabilisation and further development.
First, the project identifies concrete socially innovative practices in the care sector and analyses their prerequisites, mechanisms, and effects. To this end, multi-stakeholder networks — comprising welfare organisations, care workers, care recipients and their families, as well as local authorities — are reconstructed. Through existing practice contacts of the consortium partners, the project gains empirical access, particularly to (semi-)professional, salaried employees in the care sector.
Second, a qualitative panel study is used to analyse local societal conditions in their role as a dynamically evolving innovation ecosystem, in order to understand the extent to which innovations are both enabled and constrained. Particular attention is paid to the mobilising effects of group-related hostile attitudes found in the study region, which also play a role in care-related discourse.
January 2023 – December 2025
The project lead at HIU is Prof. Dr. Thomas Bürk
Prof. Dr. Thomas Bürk