"Now or never." About twenty social and citizen entities are demanding that the reform of the dependency law currently being processed in Congress be accelerated so that it is approved before the end of the legislature, fearing that in the next one, the balance of power in the chamber will shift in a way that makes it impossible to maintain the positive, but "insufficient," spirit that exists now. The associations have gathered under the acronym of the Platform for Autonomy and Dignified Life to demand that the right to care at all life stages and the recognition of caregivers, whether professional or family, be left "outside of political negotiations."

Up to 1,300 euros are being claimed by the Department of Social Rights from a young person with a high degree of dependency who has entered a special employment center and, therefore, should not have continued to receive the fixed economic benefit. But since bureaucracy is not prepared to automate changes, the order for the transfer of aid continues to arrive, accumulating an amount that for the family "is as if it didn't exist", it is not touched. This is one of the examples that explain what the Generalitat calls "undue payments" and which are mainly due to errors or the slowness of the administration; whether, as in the young person's case, due to incompatibilities, a downward revision of a dependency degree, or the death of the beneficiary. Last year alone, the ministry requested the repayment of 10,665 of these debts.

In the first three months of this year alone, 2,866 people have died waiting for a dependency benefit in Catalonia. They have died in what is known as limbo, the period between when the application is submitted and the administration assesses, recognizes the degree, and grants the corresponding aid through the individual care plan (PIA). There are 128,000 Catalans in this process (the vast majority of whom are elderly people), who have to wait up to 397 days (13 months) on average due to delays in their file, more than double the 180 days set as a maximum by the state dependency law.

Nursing homes bear the enormous responsibility of ensuring a dignified life for thousands of citizens, many of whom arrive to spend the most fragile and vulnerable years of their lives. Their work is essential, as the sector itself acknowledges when it denounces the lack of human and material resources with which it faces this task, in a country where, given the ever-increasing life expectancy, these facilities and services will become increasingly necessary.

Andrés Hinajeros's national identity card is atypical in two ways. First, it's permanent—without an expiration date—having been issued twenty years before he turned 70. Second, it doesn't bear his signature. This is a strange concession from the administration to Hinajeros, who has been paralyzed from strength to mobility in his arms and hands since May 1974, when, as a young man in his twenties, he became a paraplegic. He endured four grueling years of hospitalization during which he confesses his only desire was to die. But he has recovered and today says he feels content with life, to the point that he celebrates both his biological birthday and May 17th—which, as he says, "is the day I was reborn." "I'm happy," he says, "I live with quadriplegia, but I've accepted it." In this second phase of his life, he has married, had a son, and owned an orthopedics shop until his retirement. Retirement has led him to focus on obtaining official recognition of his fingerprint. He complains that banks and notaries do not allow him to use his fingertip to sign documents, offering him only the option of bringing two witnesses or appointing a guardian—requirements that make him feel like "a slave who needs masters," even though each fingerprint is unique. This has happened to him recently when making his will. "Many times they tell me to have my wife come and sign, but I am fully capable and they won't let me be free," he laments. The procedure he requests is simple, and he performs it with the help of his wife or the personal assistant who accompanies him for daily tasks: pressing the pad of his thumb into a small box with a pad moistened with blue ink until it is imprinted, and then stamping the fingerprint onto a sheet of paper. He has complained to several organizations, but always receives a negative response. "They tell me they're doing it to protect me, but the bottom line is that if you have a disability, you cease to be a person. They don't see me, they see my wheelchair." Sources at the Notarial Association justify this by citing Article 195 of the Spanish Notarial Regulations, which states that if a person is unable to sign a document, they can delegate their signature to another person or appoint a witness to verify their identity. Hinarejos finds this argument absurd and points out that the imposition of witnesses represents a loss of privacy and autonomy.

Patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in Catalonia will be able to apply for the benefit of the long-awaited ELA law Starting next week, a year and a half after its approval in the Congress of Deputies, the Catalan government will give the green light to its implementation at its weekly meeting on Tuesday, March 17th, and patients will be able to apply that same week. Once it receives an application, the Catalan executive will have a maximum of three months to respond, recognize the degree of disability, and provide the assistance. The Department of Social Rights estimates that there are around 200 people who can apply for Level III+ of extreme dependency—created specifically for this condition—which is intended to guarantee the rights of those suffering from it. incurable neurodegenerative disease to receive specialized service up to 24 hours a day if needed.

For five years, the Union of Mothers in Functional Diversity has been fighting for the rights of people with disabilities and their caregivers. The group—which brings together mothers and sisters from several generations—denounces systematic mistreatment by the administration due to bureaucracy and a underfunding of services and activitiesHowever, in the last five years they have earned the right to be direct interlocutors with the regional ministry and a major social entity.

I'd been away for a few days from someone I interact with daily, someone you have casual conversations with, exchange a quick joke now and then, and then it was off to work. When I saw her again, I asked where she'd been during her absence, and before I'd even strung two sentences together, she burst into tears to explain the turmoil caused by her increasingly dependent mother. She loves her unconditionally, but she's realized that if she doesn't create some physical and emotional distance, she'll suffocate—a conclusion she reached after several pangs of guilt, not without a heavy burden of responsibility as a daughter (more tears), but one she no longer questions for an obvious reason. Anyone who's been through it knows it's a terrible time in adulthood, because everyone involved suffers, because the burden of care often falls on women, and because the outcome is predetermined and not a happy one.

With 2025 over, the budget for the Plan that provided some relief to families with members with severe disabilities has also run out. "What should we do now?" they ask, exhausted by the scarcity of the so-called breathsTemporary stay programs in residences for people with disabilities so that families can have a break. Furthermore, these are families forcibly impoverished so that the dependency or disability entails an additional economic cost in therapies, prostheses, and caregivers that are not always covered by the public administration.

She had been writing fiction for some time for her own personal use. However, the shock of the pandemic led family doctor Alba Martínez to seek in writing a way to "find emotional closure," to say goodbye to those she knew. patients who died from COVID-19She had known them for years and had shared medical diagnoses, medication plans, and also confidences about how things were going at home, with her husband, her wife, her children. Until the virus took them suddenly, and in many cases, "when it wasn't their time."

In the next decade the number of people over 60 and 65 years old in Catalonia will almost double with the arrival of the children of the generation of baby boomThis situation will further complicate the current shortage of places in nursing homes, with waiting lists of more than two years in many centers, and there are even delays in the case of private centers. In a new report on the socioeconomic impact of care for dependent persons, prepared for another year by the Union of Entities with the support of the Catalan Association of Assistance Resources (ACRA), the employers' association of large nursing homes, figures out the challenge of aging: by 2035, 80,000 new places will need to be created, and another 26,000 professionals hired, to be able to provide reliable care to this elderly population.

One year after theapproval of the ELA law, the Spanish government creates the III+ degree of extreme dependency that must guarantee the rights of those suffering from this incurable neurodegenerative disease to receive specialized services 24 hours a day. The Minister of Social Rights, Pablo Bustinduy, announced this Tuesday that patients in a more advanced stage of the disease will receive a benefit "of up to 10,000 euros per month" to cover the costs of the professional caregivers they need to survive.

In the first nine months of this year, an average of 25 dependent people on the waiting list for assessment or benefits have died every day in Catalonia. According to data published this Friday by the State Observatory for Dependency, up to October 1, 6,851 Catalans have died without any institutional response to their needs, a figure that represents one in four of the 25,000 dependent people who have died across the country.

Last year More than 9,000 Catalans died while waiting for their degree of dependency to be recognized.This means that every hour a person dies unattended, without having received the right recognized in the dependency law. To avoid this problem, the Government is working on a plan to shorten waiting lists, which currently exceed a year between the time a benefit is requested, the level of dependency is recognized, and the approval of the individual care plan (PIA), which determines the services to which one is entitled based on the disability. According to ARA, the executive's objective is for these people to wait a maximum of two months before their disability is recognized and they receive the benefit.

A dozen people are sitting in the living-dining room. Some in wheelchairs, others in armchairs. Almost all of them are women, half asleep, their heads tilted, even though it's only 10:00 a.m. and they've been out of bed for two hours. A José Luis Perales song plays in the background from a television that's on. The only ones who seem awake are a couple of elderly women cradling dolls, and another woman running the palm of her hand over the tables as if dusting, although she doesn't have a cloth. In the living-dining room, no geriatric assistant is watching. The two working this morning on the third floor of the residence are too busy attending to other patients.

Between residential and home care, the overwhelming majority of Catalans (93%) would prefer to receive care at home, according to the latest Òmnibus survey. More chronic, neurodegenerative, oncological, and mobility-related illnesses associated with aging, greater loneliness, and greater economic hardship—coupled with demographic predictions that indicate that in less than a decade, one in four inhabitants of the country will be over 65—reveal the need for healthcare and social resources.

Hand disability and dependency, complementary aid, and more support at home. These are some of the new features of the draft reform of the dependency and disability laws that the Council of Ministers approved this Tuesday in the second round of voting. It now faces parliamentary proceedings. The Minister of Social Rights, Pablo Bustinduy, has defended the initiatives as "far-reaching" in the legislature because, on the one hand, they protect people with disabilities from discrimination and, on the other, they project the new care model into the future, assuming the high rates of population aging in the coming years.

Mothers with dependent children who must stop working. Daughters or wives who care for parents or partners at home"Families, primarily women, are forced to sacrifice themselves, to make great sacrifices of their lives," summarizes Gustavo García, coordinator of the 2024 DESC Index, which the State Association of Directors and Managers of Social Services uses annually to compile official figures on the state of public social services. The phrase serves to illustrate the extent to which the new home care models advocated by all governments (the ministry is implementing a deinstitutionalization strategy) fail when they clash with the reality of households that must do their part to care for dependent family members with the limited public aid they receive.

Marcial González Rodríguez is 60 years old and has been confined to a wheelchair for 42 years. When he was young, he had the idea of climbing a tree and fell fatally into the void in Torre Baró, the Barcelona neighborhood in the film. The 47 Where the houses were built haphazardly on the mountainside, and the views of the city are spectacular, but getting there requires patience. However, every day, Monday through Friday, a municipal home care worker visits his home. She stays for a maximum of an hour and a half. She takes him, washes his body, combs his hair, dresses him, gives him breakfast, and leaves him sitting in his wheelchair until a friend puts him back to bed at two in the afternoon. Three hours later, his sister prepares him a lunch and dinner that serves him until the next day.