Community care

In recent years, we have been facing events with a global impact. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about changes in the functioning of human society, and one of the most burdened areas has been healthcare. It became clear that, despite all their efforts, healthcare institutions cannot cope with the influx of patients during crisis situations, which is why other solutions, such as volunteering, came to the fore.
At the same time, in economically developed countries, we are witnessing not only the development of medical possibilities but also long-term demographic changes associated with an increase in the incidence of chronic and disabling diseases, which again places higher demands on healthcare institutions and caring relatives.
Likewise, the so-called medicalisation of our lives, where the resolution of many life situations is shifted to healthcare institutions, consequently leads to a constant increase in the demands on the healthcare system.
At the same time, it is demonstrable that healthcare institutions are not always the ideal choice from the user's perspective and for ensuring all their needs are met.
One of the ways to relieve the overburdened healthcare system and simultaneously secure the needs of care users is to emphasise the support for the development of various forms of community care. Some of them have been developing for a long time and quite distinctively in the Czech Republic as well. However, because more than ten years have passed since the last Czech monographs on this topic were written, the options for using community care that are now available are somewhat unclear.
This monograph is thus intended primarily for current and future healthcare professionals (for whom the teaching of community care is now an integral part of their professional training), as well as for other helping professions, such as social workers, with the aim of providing a comprehensive overview of current international and national health promotion and community care strategies, and an overview of the community care services offered, with an emphasis on the area of health promotion. It is also the authors' ambition to present a glimpse of the directions in which community care could evolve in the future.