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Good practice

Uruguay's National Integrated Care System (Sistema Nacional Integrado de Cuidados)

Uruguay · Montevideo · See the Uruguay profile

Uruguay's Law 19.353 (2015) created the first Latin American national care system, professionalising care work and expanding subsidised childcare and elder care to redistribute the unpaid-care burden that falls overwhelmingly on women.

23.8 %
Unpaid care work as share of GDP (2022)
94.9 %
Registered paid care workers who are women
Uruguay's National Integrated Care System (Sistema Nacional Integrado de Cuidados)

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Secretaría Nacional de Cuidados, Ministerio de Desarrollo Social (MIDES), Uruguay
Period
2015–present
Keywords
care economy, unpaid work, childcare, long-term care, social policy

Context

Uruguay's Law 19.353 (2015) created the Sistema Nacional Integrado de Cuidados (SNIC), Latin America's first national care system, expanding subsidised childcare, home-based teleassistance for older people, and disability personal-assistance services while formalising care work as a regulated profession.

Results

Uruguay's 2022 national Time Use Survey found unpaid care work equivalent to 23.8% of GDP, with women contributing 16.0 percentage points versus 7.8 for men; in the resulting paid care sector, 94.9% of registered workers are women.

Conclusions

Independent research on SIEMPRE early-childhood centres found they increase women's availability for paid work and training, but do not by themselves achieve significant redistribution of care within households, nor include specific tools to promote co-responsibility among fathers.

Implementation

Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.

Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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