The Government has allocated a total of 25.9 million euros of Next Generation European funds to finance 67 social projects in the regions of the Ponent area. These are initiatives, both from the Government itself and promoted by entities, that are aimed at a wide range of citizens, such as the elderly, children and young people, people with disabilities or mental illness and homeless people.
The Minister of Social Rights, Carles Campuzano, presented the financed actions at an event in Lleida this Wednesday.
The future ‘La Bassa’ community center of the Alba Foundation in Sant Martí de Maldà, the ‘BonÀrea’ residence for elderly people in Guissona or a robot to improve the autonomy of people with disabilities. are some of the selected projects.
Drets Socials will allocate nearly 400 million euros from the Next Generation EU fund to infrastructure and social projects throughout the country.
Within the framework of this European fund, the Department will finance, until 2026, 765 initiatives aimed at accelerating a transformation in the field of care for people that brings Catalonia on par with the most advanced European countries in terms of social protection.
Carles Campuzano has highlighted the need to respond to a new demographic reality that leads to an increasingly older and more diverse population. “We need investment in infrastructure, we need to modernize our welfare state, making it 21st century,” and he added that European funds “are a unique opportunity to face the country’s social challenges,” he said.
The bulk of the aid is allocated to the construction, expansion and remodeling of social facilities. In total, three new facilities will be built and nine more will be remodeled and expanded. The newly built centers are the ‘BonÀrea’ residence for seniors in Guissona, with a capacity of 242 places; the Zona Alta day center in Lleida, and the Puigverd de Agramunt day care center.
Regarding the remodeled or renovated buildings, the ‘La Bassa’ community space of the Alba Foundation stands out. The project, located in Sant Martí de Maldà, has received more than 900,000 euros from the Next Generation fund and includes a home-residence for up to 24 people with intellectual disabilities and 20 more places for a day center. It will also offer home care to surrounding towns. The works are already finished and the forecast is that the equipment can open doors during the first half of this year, explained its coordinator, Marina Minguell.
The Government has financed 11 technological initiatives to serve people, which seek to promote personal autonomy and delay institutionalization for as long as possible. One of the beneficiary entities of this line has been the Aitona City Council, which has received 168,000 euros for promoting a comprehensive plan for home health care assistance in the municipality.
Another of the projects funded in Lleida is the ‘A-jut’ robot designed by the Saltó group, which has the objective of improving the autonomy of people with disabilities. The project is promoted by the Aspid association in Lleida and has 6 units in Lleida and another 4 in Girona.
The entity’s head of personal autonomy services, Laia Ribas, explained that the idea comes from presenting technology as a “support that is here to stay.” With the financial resources of the Next Generation funds, they have been able to develop pilot tests with different users and in this way validate the technology that is now “very incipient” but with the possibility of promoting it in the future.
All this to ensure that people with disabilities can continue living at home, whether alone or accompanied. The robot can interact with them and in the background the entire emotional aspect is also worked on, such as loneliness or relationships, since with the device you can connect with the outside, making calls or video calls that make it easier to see on the screen.
One of the users, Albert Bresco, is very satisfied with the experience after a few months with the robot in his home. He says that the main benefit he gets is that it reminds him of things since he has a very bad memory. He lives alone and the robot also makes sure that nothing happens to him when he has to cook or do some other task. At first he admits that it was a little difficult for him to know how to use it but he assures that afterward “you get used to it.”
10 pilot projects have been financed in the field of social services. Furthermore, within the framework of the event, the Paeria de Lleida has presented the pilot project for a new model of care for senior centers, for which it receives more than one million euros from European funds.
In total, the program aimed at facilities that serve children and young people in the Lleida neighborhood includes 6 actions that include, among others, improvements and digitalization of centers of the child protection system, ecological improvement actions in neighborhood homes or hostel renovations.
In this sense, an investment of more than 1.2 million euros stands out for the construction of the Barnahus in Lleida to care for children and adolescents who are victims of sexual abuse. 745,000 euros are also allocated to the Lleida Youth Hostel to improve the air conditioning systems and make them more sustainable.
With regard to improving accessibility, 17 town councils will receive subsidies worth 657,000 euros to carry out projects to improve accessibility in citizen service spaces, both physical and telematic. Interventions will also be made in other buildings and spaces such as the Les Borges Blanques library or in the Historical Archive, libraries and territorial services of the Department of Culture and in the judicial building of Lleida.