EXAMPLES OF BEST PRACTICES IN SERVICES FOR THE ELDERLY IN SPAIN.

Over time, the social services sets from the different autonomous communities experienced significant changes in the last years. These changes have not only been of a quantitative nature, with the supply of places and the users number increasing, but new services have been achieved in order to meet more satisfactorily the elderly’s needs. The discussed social services are grouped by the following categories:

• Home care service. A part from the Home Care Service (HCS) and from the Telecare Service, other home care services are included in this category (takeout service and home laundry service), as well as economic benefits, aids for house adaptation, care families, technical aids and support products, etc. Due to the crisis, and because of the great demand by the recipients increasing from year to year, the service is being delivered without getting to the hundred percent of them.

The home care service, which experienced a very important growth in these last years, is part of municipal responsibilities, managed within the basic municipal network and regulated within the autonomous public administrations remit.

The highest attended people’s rate is concentrated in five autonomous communities: Catalonia, Madrid, Andalusia, Castile and León and Castilla-La Mancha, what is no wonder since they are among the most populated regions. The significant number of volunteers who got involved in the direct care for dependent or needy people played a very relevant role.

Another service that experienced a great demand is the Telecare, mostly in the main cities.

• Day care services. Homes and clubs, which are resources designed to foster social participation plus healthy and active life enhancement, are included in this category as well as personal life encouragement. Day care centre for dependent people.

The Day Care Centre for dependent elderly is an intermediate social resource which is defined as both a social and therapeutic gerontological and family support centre. It pays attention to the basic needs, both therapeutic and social, of the dependent elderly fostering his autonomy and an adapted stay within his habitual environment. This resource’s aim is to improve both the caring family and the elderly’s quality of life thanks to an intervention aimed, on one hand, to provide a total care for the dependent elderly, and on the other hand, to supply enough support to the family in order to enable an adapted stay for the elderly within his habitual environment.

The specific objectives of the intervention to be achieved in a day care centre can be grouped according to the three basic focuses of the intervention: the dependent elderly, the caring family and the professional caregivers. Their goals are: to recover and/or maintain the highest possible level of independence; retard and prevent the dependence increase by strengthening and developing the self-esteem and fostering an adequate psychological and emotional state; to avoid or retard unwanted and unwise definitive institutionalizations.

• Residential care services. A wide range of services is encompassed in this section including residential centres and houses for the elderly that get to fill the number of vacancies due to the high demand.

Homes and clubs for the elderly are social centres where leisure and cultural activities are carried out fostering social relationships among its members, active ageing and social participation. The exact number of members is unknown due to the lack of notification of their death or those who no longer wish to be member for different reasons.

The Spanish State Administration, through the Imserso (Elderly and Social Services Institute), within its active ageing policy, promotes a tourism program headed to the elderly in order to facilitate their inclusion to the touristic flows as well as to relieve the consequences that, in matters of employment, produces the seasonal variation phenomenon in the country’s tourism sector. Any person residing in Spain meeting any of the following requirements can participate.

• To be a retirement pensioner from the Spanish Pensions Public System.
• To be a survivor’s pensioner and to be at least 55 years old.
• Pensioners for other reasons or receive unemployment benefits or subsidies being in any case at least 60 years old.
• To be entitled under or to be beneficiary of the Social Security system, with at least 65 years old.

The spouse or unmarried partner will be able to participate without the need to meet the age or the pension requirements. The go and return journey by the programmed mean of transport is offered; Full board accommodation, collective insurance policy, Social Security supplementary medical care in the hotel; animation program. Nature Tourism, Cultural Tours and Trips to Cities do not include the medical care or the animation.

A Hydrotherapy Program exists and it includes: Full board accommodation; Basic thermal treatments which contain medical examination; Basic thermal treatment in each case prescribed by the spa doctor; Medical follow-up of the treatment; collective tourism insurance policy. The transportation will be carried out by the participant’s own means.

Domingo Pérez Auyanet