“Can anyone imagine the effect of that certified letter on us? Can anyone come close to the avalanche of emotions in which we are buried after that letter?” This is asked by Esther Ortega, who, on April 15, 2020, in the worst of the pandemic, stood at the door of the Orpea Alcobendas arranged residence and demanded to get as much money from her father – with an arranged place for which she paid 600 euros. monthly – like his mother – in a private place for which he paid 3,000 euros.
The letter in question arrived last Friday. It is a certified email that has removed a “trauma”. It is signed by Cesáreo de la Puebla, deputy director of Benefits of the Government of the Community of Madrid chaired by Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and is required to pay 2,586.95 euros for five months in a nursing home in which his father was no longer there. , because he gave up the position to go to a day center, as must be stated in the public system, which managed the transfer. “This is shameful and outrageous, and it shakes up everything my mother and I have been through.”
The chain of nonsense started in March 2020, when Madrid residences reached a peak in deaths that broke all records in Spain. The staff was not reinforced, nor were the elderly who lived there referred to hospitals. Almost half of the staff were sick or on sick leave. The older ones couldn’t go out. Family members could not enter. And Esther, faced with the panorama of lack of control and neglect in which she saw her parents, went to the residence in person and demanded to take them home.
Although she tried to suspend her father’s payments during the time that she cared for him at home, the Department of Social Services of the Community of Madrid warned her that, if she did so, she would lose the right to return to the residence when she passed. the pandemic. “We needed to keep that place because it had taken years to be granted it, it is an odyssey to get it,” Esther told elDiario.es in April of this year. So he paid the 600 per month even though his father did not use the care, the bed, the food or the staff. Meanwhile, he in turn paid for his parents’ care at home: food, general expenses and a hired person.
Although the Ayuso Government could have suspended payments or initiated a moratorium due to the chaotic situation in the residences, it decided to continue demanding payments from families. The public system paid the full receipts to private companies and contractors, as if nothing had happened and normal services had been provided 100%: more than 4,000 places were paid without a resident to occupy them.
From residence to day center
In September 2020, after the worst of the pandemic, Esther decided to request a change in the Comprehensive Care Plan (PIA) for her father and, instead of returning him to her residence, she requested a place in a day center, resigning thus to his square in Alcobendas. The procedure was managed by a municipal social worker and was granted. His relationship with the residence had to end and did end there.
But Esther’s ordeal did not end there. In April 2021, seven months after he thought he had closed the chapter of anguish over his parents’ situation, a worker from the Community of Madrid called him to demand payment for more months. Specifically, until March 2021, when the father’s supposed “death” had occurred. The same father who was listening to the conversation next to Esther – alive –, while she – astonished – explained that he had not died and was no longer in that residence. He clarified the situation and put a complaint in writing.
Manuel, her father, died a year later, in February 2022. Now, more than two years after the death of her father, the Community of Madrid insists and has contacted Esther again – on this occasion, for certified mail – to claim the extra five months again, even though he was no longer in the residence but in the day center. “They stole five monthly payments from him for a service that they did not give him and that they were not complying with and now they want to bleed him another five, when he was no longer in the residence system. “They are unforgivable errors that, far from being corrected, are repeated.” In addition, he accuses the administration in a letter of “bleeding the dead and killing the living.”
The certified mail from Social Affairs insists that Manuel left the residence in March 2021 when he had left it in October 2020, and threatens that if it is not paid in a timely manner “the debt will be transferred to Executive Collection, applying a surcharge of 20% plus the corresponding interest, on the amount required in this Resolution.” Esther, indignant, asks herself: “What percentage of extra charge do I have to give to the Community for everything they are putting me and my mother through?” She has sent an official email and another claim, in addition to sending a statement to the president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso: “Everyone I know who has gone through this trauma of the pandemic and how they have managed it has had physical or mental consequences, us too.” Esther has decided, for the moment, not to pay.
Madrid claims half a million from relatives
Between the months of March and April 2020, almost 10,000 elderly people living in nursing homes died in Madrid. It was the region in Europe with the most excess deaths in the pandemic, according to data from the Committee of the Regions. Of them, a total of 7,291 died without being transferred to a hospital due to the strict protocols of the Community of Madrid, which stopped most referrals. The Government chaired by Isabel Díaz Ayuso – who did not medicalize the residences – has demanded payment for the month in which all of these elderly people died, despite the fact that many did so without adequate assistance, with staff reduced by up to 40% due to sick leave and without minimum sanitary measures, as reported by family members, workers and as highlighted by the citizen report of the Commission for Truth in Residences.
In total, from 2021 (when claims begin for the pandemic year) until the first months of 2024, the Department of Family and Social Affairs has made 470 requests to relatives of deceased elderly people to claim the money they owe, according to the department’s own response to a question from elDiario.es through the Transparency Portal. In total, the Community is claiming more than 530,000 euros from these families in that period.
The Ministry of Social Affairs responded late this Monday afternoon that it is reviewing the file and “checking if there could have been any error” in Ortega’s case. They have not answered whether other errors or complaints have been detected regarding the management of the debts that are being claimed from families.
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