European countries differ greatly in the proportions of people who receive various types of care. They also differ considerably regarding the societal characteristics of care such as the availability of formal care within the country. We explored the explanatory potential of contextual characteristics of the provision of formal home care, and barriers to using long-term care services for older people’s care arrangements across Europe. We employed data from Wave 5 of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, and analyze the data using a multinomial logistic model. Less involvement and lower national governance in the integration of home care policy decreases the use of formal care alone, and in combination with informal care. Higher integration and coordination in delivering home-care services increases the use of formal services. In countries with higher shares of reported barriers to using their long-term care systems there is a smaller probability of formal services being used.