This year marks beginning of a new Nordic-Baltic cooperation project in the field of social and health care. It aims at supporting the Nordic-Baltic dialogue on social and health issues and at strengthening Nordic-Baltic networks within social and health areas.
The intended aim will be achieved by creating Nordic-Baltic meeting spaces in the form of seminars, conferences, workshops and pan-Baltic study visits as well as by spreading the collected knowledge. The thematic focus areas were agreed by the Nordic-Baltic senior officials’ meeting in Vilnius on September 25, 2024. The topics are stretching from mental health, crisis preparedness to implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) and countering the shortage of personnel in health and social care. The project aims at both the public sector’s actors and civil society organisations working with children and adults’ mental health, substance abuse by young persons, implementation of the UNCRPD, digitalisation within social and health sector, crisis preparedness and dementia care.
The project will lead to cross-border, cross-sectoral and cross-institutional experience exchange. It will boost also inter-Nordic and inter-Baltic interaction and networking among the involved actors. The project’s activities will boost the involved institutions’ knowledge and capacity both for cross-border networking on macro-regional level and competence building on local level in their home countries. Special efforts will be made toward forming new and supporting existing networks of expert practitioners and communication of project’s achievements in both the Nordic and the Baltic countries.
The project will be implemented by the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Offices in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania (with the NCM Office in Latvia as the lead partner) in close collaboration with the Nordic Senior Officials’ Committee for Social and Health, the Nordic Council of Ministers’ secretariat, national ministries for social affairs and health in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the Nordic Welfare Centre, the Nordic Disability Council, Nordic thematic networks of experts and NGO’s in the Nordic and Baltic countries.
