- Care is a public policy issue with direct implications for employment, professional development, and family well-being.
- The success of a care system depends on more than passing legislation. Countries' experiences offer valuable lessons for building stronger care systems.
- The IDB Group is advancing the care agenda in our region through initiatives such as IDB Cares and RedCUIDAR+.
Throughout our lives, we all need care or provide it to someone else: babies, older adults, people with disabilities, or those experiencing illness. No one is outside this equation. In Chile, for example, an estimated 4.8 million people, nearly one-quarter of the population, provide care to someone else. This figure illustrates, in just one country, the scale of a phenomenon that extends across Latin America and the Caribbean.
For a long time, however, care was treated as a private matter: something that took place behind closed doors and was primarily the responsibility of families, particularly women. This is changing. More and more countries in the region are incorporating care into public policies, recognizing its implications for employment, professional development, and family well-being.
That is why, through IDB Cares, an initiative of the IDB Group, which comprises the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), IDB Invest, and IDB Lab, we are promoting investment, technical cooperation, and knowledge generation to strengthen the governance and financing of comprehensive care systems, expand access to quality services, and encourage greater participation by different stakeholders in care responsibilities.
Drawing on experiences across the region, this blog post explores a central question: What do countries need to build strong, sustainable care systems capable of responding to different needs?
Latin America's Experience: Seven Core Principles of Care
Care is becoming increasingly prominent in public policies across Latin America:
- Chile's Senate unanimously approved the law establishing the National Support and Care System in January 2026, consolidating the recognition of care as a right guaranteed by the state.
- Uruguay, a regional pioneer with its National Integrated Care System established in 2015, presented a new National Care Plan for 2026–2030 in April 2026, aimed at expanding coverage.
- Costa Rica approved its National Care and Support System for Adults and Older Adults in Situations of Dependency in 2022.
- Mexico City made progress in 2025 with its own Public Care System Law.
- Honduras is currently working on its National Comprehensive Care System Law.
Although models vary from country to country, an examination of their legal frameworks reveals seven common principles.
1. Care as a right and a shared responsibility
One of the advances of this new generation of laws is the recognition of people's right to provide care, receive care, and care for themselves. This approach broadens the traditional understanding of care, placing it at the center of well-being policies and promoting shared responsibility among the state, families, communities, the private sector, and society as a whole.
The Chilean law approved this year illustrates this evolution by recognizing care as a right and the state as its guarantor.
2. A clear definition of care and who is entitled to it
Defining who needs care and which services are included in the system helps guide policies, allocate resources, and identify care needs.
Care laws typically define concepts such as "dependency," "autonomy," "care services," "caregivers," and "care system." This may seem like a technical detail, but it has concrete implications: clear definitions make it possible to identify target populations, assign institutional responsibilities, and design services that respond to different needs.
3. Quality and professionalization of care services
The quality of care depends on the training of those who provide it, as well as clear standards, oversight mechanisms, and adequate working conditions for caregivers.
Uruguay's new plan includes measures to professionalize the care workforce and bring care workers into collective bargaining processes, along with new quality indicators for services. Advancing the professionalization of the sector can help improve service quality and create formal, specialized employment opportunities.
4. Recognition, reduction, and redistribution of unpaid care work
A significant share of care work is performed without pay and within households. Care policies seek to recognize this work, reduce the care responsibilities borne by families, and promote greater participation by different stakeholders in society.
In the Dominican Republic, the National Care System seeks to highlight and recognize the value of unpaid care work, historically performed largely by women, while promoting support and social protection mechanisms for those who carry out these responsibilities.
5. Coordination among services, programs, and benefits
Most countries already have care-related services, but these are often fragmented across institutions and programs that operate in isolation.
The challenge is to bring them together: coordinate stakeholders, build a shared vision, and make better use of available resources to deliver more comprehensive and efficient responses.
6. Interinstitutional governance mechanisms
Care involves areas such as health, social protection, education, employment, and territorial development, among others. It therefore requires clearly defined institutions and coordination mechanisms.
7. A financing framework that supports gradual and sustainable expansion
Expanding care services requires stable resources and a phased implementation strategy. Countries therefore need institutions capable of coordinating policies and making effective decisions, supported by sufficient and flexible financing that allows for gradual expansion tailored to each country's capacities and priorities.
Uruguay's experience, with more than a decade of implementation since the establishment of its care system by law, illustrates this point: even with a consolidated institutional framework, sustaining and expanding long-term care coverage remains a challenge.
Putting Care Laws into Practice
These principles offer a clear lesson: the success of a care system depends on more than passing a law. They can also serve as a roadmap for countries seeking to strengthen their care policies. Countries across the region are at different stages of this process, and their experiences offer valuable opportunities to learn from one another.
Many of these issues were at the center of discussions during the 13th meeting of RedCUIDAR+, held in Montevideo, Uruguay, under the theme “Caring Societies: Progress and Opportunities in Long-Term Care”. The discussions and exchanges highlighted that building comprehensive care systems is a gradual process with enormous potential to improve the quality of life of those who need support, generate employment, and promote a more equitable distribution of care responsibilities. Investing in care is, without a doubt, investing in development.
Visit IDB Cares to learn more about care in Latin America and the Caribbean.