First was the shock plan, then the strategy to promote permanence at home with good public resources against residences and now the law. The Government has taken on Tuesday the first step to reform the standards of dependency and disability with the approval of a draft law that modifies both texts at once. The changes, which need to submit to a good number of procedures until their vote in the Congress of Deputies, affect a large number of people. Only in the last year have they entered the protection system almost 80,000 users and the number of people with some degree of dependency recognized in Spain already exceeds the million and a half.
“This reform ends with the cuts of the Popular Party – which reached 5,000 million euros during the crisis – shields the dependency system and reinforces a care model that strengthens the welfare state,” said the Minister of Social Rights , Pablo Bustinduy, at the press conference after the Council of Ministers.
The Ministry acknowledges that “the news that appears on dependency is negative” and that “there is a lot parliamentarian a year ago, and to continue displaying “a community -based care model and that fosters the autonomy” of people in a country that is being transformed: more and more aged, with smaller families and many people living alone . “Now there are users who can be more than a decade in the system and in 2006 they barely stayed two or three years,” they point out from the department.
Bustinduy has stressed to journalists that a “huge budget effort” is being made to sustain the system with 3,411 million euros of contribution of the State in 2024, “150% more than in 2018” and “213 million more” than the year than the year previous despite the extension of the budgets. “We improve the system and improve financing,” he added.
However, in the department they also admit that the reform will not solve the infinance problems in the short term. The lists and waiting times have improved in the last three years after the economic injections of the government to coalition, but is far from attending all situations.
The Association of Directors and Managers of Social Services, who publish a photograph of the situation of the agency year after year, is critical of the reform because, they consider, “it is still far from guaranteeing the rights recognized by the current rule” as To propose new without more budget. The Ministry of Social Rights promised to continue increasing the financing of the State to reach up to 4,000 million euros at the end of the legislature but the lack of budgets has suspended this intention.
These are the measures that are proposed in the text that has passed its first process this Tuesday:
End to the latest PP cuts
A decade later, the dependency care system drags measures that were taken after the economic crisis of 2008. This reform aims to end the last two: the incompatibility between benefits and the period of two years in the economic benefit by Family care
In the case of the first, although some communities had already repealed it, the law protects that the same user cannot have access to two supports (for example, a day center in the morning and home help in the afternoon). If the text ends up, several benefits may be compatible. Regarding the economic benefit, the administration can be delayed for up to two years to enter the user the monthly amount to cover their home care without the payment of the delay in retroactively delay.
What services are expanded?
Home help extends outside the home. The benefit, focused so far on personal care and domestic activities on a day -to -day basis, will also cover, according to the new text, other daily issues such as going to the doctor or the purchase.
The benefit for home care is extended from the “family environment” to the “relational.” The objective is to equate a friend or friend as if it were a relative with some degree of sewing, although the holder of the benefit is always the user. Dependent people not only live with their partners, parents or descendants and the text aims to respond to these “new situations of coexistence” and the reality of those who live alone. This is subject to “adequate conditions of coexistence and habitability are met.”
Personal assistance is not only for education or employment. The current law restricts this resource, designed to promote independent life with personalized care adjusted to the person’s preferences, to support if the dependent person is studying or works. With the reform it is recognized as a service, and a first step to extend many more people.
What service are added?
A new service to provide wheelchairs, beds or cranes. This measure implies the creation of a public bank to prevent people who need to have to invest in elements that help them remain at home.
Beyond the house or residence, collective homes. Care currently can only be provided at home or in residences. With the reform, the government intends to add, among the options, housing with support: or where few people live with comprehensive care or within collective equipment with shared services, such as the Cohousing.
Each of the communities has to incorporate these novelties into its catalog of services under the obligation that it is not the administration that decides (it is expressly eliminated from the law), but the person. The Ministry of Health ensures that some territories already have them. “The law establishes minimal and basic conditions, and everything that arises is mandatory,” they clarify from social rights taking into account that it is the autonomous communities that have the powers to provide the services and those that confine them together with the State .
More agile procedures
One of the serious system problems are waiting times. The average since the valuation of the degree of dependence is requested until the person has access to any benefit is 334 days. That is, about a year. Although the delay has shortened in more than 100 days since 2020, once the shock plan began to be implemented, the times continue to force to hire private resources and there are even people who die without having access to their benefit.
A catwalk between dependence and disability. The reform of the General Law of Rights of Persons with Disabilities will automatically grant a 33% disability to all persons with a recognized dependence situation to reduce bureaucracy.
We will not have to put the end of the list to review the degree of dependence. The procedure to review the individual care program will be expedited so that the supports are adjusted, as quickly as possible, to the person.
An emergency procedure for some situations of special vulnerability. “Factors such as dementia, social isolation, gender violence or economic precariousness will allow reorder the treatment of files,” the ministry progresses.
More recognized rights
Accessibility is recognized as a right. Until the reform of the law was an “inspiring principle” but not a recognized right, according to social rights.
Telecare is also contemplated, for the first time, as a fundamental right for all people with dependency living in their homes.
The works to put an elevator will be mandatory. The Ministry of Social Rights changes, through this text, the horizontal property law so that actions to ensure accessibility are mandatory. The law enables neighbors who request the intervention to “go to justice to force the works under the conditions provided by law.” In Spain there are 100,000 people locked in their homes because the blocks have accessibility problems, as calculated by the Spanish committee of representatives of people with disabilities (CERMI).
Free Attention. This right, already recognized in a previous agreement, becomes part of the law and limits the use of subjection to “exceptional situations of imminent danger to life” provided they are applied proportionally, during the “strictly necessary” time and After “having exhausted the alternative measures.” To be carried out, it will have to be supported in a “documented procedure with specific medical prescription, technical supervision and the informed consent” of the affected person.
No discrimination in the hiring of insurance. Ministry sources say that people with disabilities are imposed “very burdens” clauses when hiring health or life insurance. “With this reform we are going to generate an obligation that no discrimination insurance will have the same conditions as the rest of the citizenship,” they explain from the department.
A state fund
Social rights admits that Spain has a “vigorous regulations regarding accessibility” but mandates are not carried out “due to lack of resources.” Therefore, the reform includes the creation of a State Fund for the Promotion of Universal Accessibility to guarantee financing. For example, a public museum can go to this fund to cover, for example, a ramp.
More severe fines
The new disability law modifies the sanctioning regime so that it is regulated as a serious infraction, fined between 600,000 and one million euros, “a person’s public exposure in response to their disability, either in a show, at a fair , in a place open to the public or on social networks when it does not constitute a criminal offense. ” Collection for these fines will be used for “universal accessibility promotion programs”
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