Friday, September 08, 2006
Home Help for the Aged in Spain?
The other day, we linked to a story at the BBC about a British man in Tenerife who developed Alzheimers, but could not get the kind of support here in Spain that he would get in the UK. Yes, he'd get the same rights as a local, but discovered there is no home help or district nursing system here.
Yet. As I also mentioned in that post, there are developments in this area. Last December, the Council of Ministers of the Spanish Government passed the draft for the Ley de Dependencia (a.k.a. Law for the Promotion of Personal Autonomy and Attention to Dependent Persons). The project was passed in April.
Translation of the description is that, "The law regulates the basic conditions for the promotion of personal autonomy and attention to persons in a situation of dependency, via the creation of a national system of dependency, with the collaboration and participation of all the public administrations."
Basically, this is the first law in Spain that anticipates giving help to people to remain independent: i.e. not looked after by families or in residential care.
Although I have not had the time to read the full text, it is specifically recognized that there is a relation between dependency and age and, services anticipated (logically from the description) do include items such as; phone assistance, home help, day centers, residential attention and help for adapting the home.
In a recent talk given to an old folk's center in La Guancha, the doctor who gave the talk, Santiago Marrero Núñez, defined the Ley de Dependencia as "an important social achievement, as it proposes a national system of dependency, which will be gradually implanted during the 8 years beginning from 2007."
