Lessons from abroad for funding long-term care in England: a prospective policy transfer perspective on official documents

Abstract

PurposeMany governments stress the importance of “learning from abroad”. An analysis of official documents over a period of some 20 years examines learning from abroad in the case of funding long-term care in England through the lens of prospective policy transfer.Design/methodology/approachThe paper analyses the eight “official” documents in England that examined funding LTC from 1999 to 2019. It uses interpretive content analysis in a deductive approach that focuses on both manifest and latent content.FindingsOnly four of the eight documents gave more than a token level of attention to other nations, and of the remaining four, none fully satisfied the criteria or followed the recommendations of prospective policy transfer. Moreover, a rather limited pool of lessons from other nations is examined. Much of the material is rather descriptive, with limited explicit attention towards goals, problems, settings and policy performance, and a clear recommendation explicitly associated with a clear lesson or policy recommendation is rare.Originality/valueThis is the first analysis of the eight official documents that have discussed funding long-term care in England.