An 85-year-old woman, a widow for seven years and with an 80 percent disability that compromises her mobility, has been sleeping for almost two years in a corridor of a social health center in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The lady does not want to be separated from her son who is admitted to the center’s mental health unit. The man is her only close family, as her other two daughters live off the islands.
Given this situation of helplessness, the protagonist of this story, spread by the newspaper Canarias 7, prefers to stay and live in this center dependent on the Cabildo de Gran Canaria, the El Pino socio-sanitary center, and spend the night in an armchair or in the folding bed that Those responsible have given her to be alone in her house.
An exceptional situation to which both the Department of Social Policies of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria and the General Directorate of Dependency and Disability of the Canarian Government and the Prosecutor’s Office, try to give an answer, which could involve the involuntary admission of the elderly woman in this social health center.
For this, it is necessary that the Institute of Anatomical and Forensic Sciences assess this woman and issue a report, a task that social workers believe is difficult given the difficulty of making an appointment for her to a house where she does not live.
Francisca M., who receives a pension, cannot access a residential place in this privately run public center through ordinary channels, despite her degree I dependency and her 80 percent disability that leads her to use a walker to walk, as they do not meet the requirements, as explained by the Island Councilor for Social Policies, Isabel Mena.
