In the WhatsApp group of directors and managers of dependency care centers and services, comments are circulating about the information published in ARA about the fines of 5.2 million euros to geriatric residences. This is explained by the president of DiGESCAD, Andrés Rueda, who laments the “criminalization” of these facilities.

Poor medication management, inadequate or insufficient diets, poor hygiene, and failure to guarantee continuous care for residents are just some of the reasons why nursing homes in Catalonia have been sanctioned. Falsifying data, ignoring warnings from the administration, and obstructing inspections and the provision of information to families are also contributing factors. Since 2020, the total amount of fines has reached €5,321,733, according to data provided to ARA by the Department of Social Rights in response to a request submitted through the Catalan government's transparency portal. While the number of sanctioned residences is not specified, with the exception of 2020 and 2024, the number of sanctioning proceedings exceeds one hundred in all other years. However, the department allows residences that have rectified the infractions to invest the fine amount in facility improvements.

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.

Catalan municipalities have issued a plea for help, urging the Generalitat (Catalan government) not to abandon them in assisting people experiencing homelessness. While there is no official census quantifying homelessness, it is clearly a widespread phenomenon. It already surpasses the metropolitan area and extends to small towns throughout the country. Local councils agree that, currently, the problem lacks sufficient financial resources.

Carmen Castillo has been seeing a psychiatrist for over forty years and, now, about to turn 75, she often visits her primary care physician or the hospital more than she'd like. On her daughter's advice, she's waiting for the telecare button and a dependency assessment to qualify for a subsidy to adapt her bathroom, a process she says has become complicated because she had to go to the doctor who has known her for years to get a report on how osteoarthritis has reduced her mobility. "They send you from one place to another looking for someone who understands you and will take care of you," she complains. This duplication of procedures is what the future Integrated Social and Healthcare Agency (AGAISS-Cat), approved this Wednesday by the Catalan Parliament, aims to eliminate. However, if all goes well, it won't be operational for another year, and the full integration of both services won't be complete until November 2027. The approval of the AGAISS-CAT law was supported by the PSC, Junts, ERC, and Comuns, with abstentions from the PP and Aliança and votes against from the CUP and Vox deputies. During the parliamentary debate, the Minister of Health, Olga Pané, emphasized that the new body will guarantee the sustainability of the healthcare and social services systems, while the Minister of Social Rights, Mònica Martínez, stated that a "new era" is beginning to integrate two pillars of the welfare state and profoundly change the way care is provided. For four decades, Catalan governments had attempted to integrate these two services, but it is only now that a tool has been created to "improve care" for the one million people who require healthcare and social services, whether due to dependency, disability, or chronic illness. The project leaders explain that AGAISS-Cat represents a "new perspective," a "pioneering and innovative" model that should make life easier not only for citizens but also for professionals. The cornerstone of the new social and healthcare structure is a one-stop shop that will guide patients through the pathways, preventing them from having to go from one doctor to another or from the social worker to the nurse. With this model, there will be a designated professional or team that can collaborate to assess and decide, in a coordinated manner, the best medical or social solution for each person at any given time, without the need to repeat tests or duplicate paperwork. This is the case of Castillo, who was diagnosed and medicated "for one thing" at the hospital and "for another" at the primary care center. The new model should involve a single assessment and streamline the pathways, which are currently very fragmented and bureaucratic. Less medication and fewer hospitalizations.

In principle, technology should facilitate the sharing of information between primary care physicians and hospitals with staff from municipal social services or the Department of Social Rights and Inclusion so that professionals can quickly understand the details of medical and social needs. This, they claim, will reduce overmedication, since there is often a tendency to prescribe drugs to treat a social problem, as well as excessive hospitalizations, and will lead to more accurate diagnoses and treatments.

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They were called "the Erasmus" because they were different from the others. unaccompanied foreign minors who arrive by boat. Perhaps because they had an expensive phone or because of the stories they told. Finally, the nickname given to them by the National Police has turned out to be true because a fraud has been uncovered in Tarragona in which several parents abandoned their children so that the latter would declare themselves abandoned and could enter the protection system. At the moment, there are thirty parents arrested and 22 of these children have returned to their biological family, although the investigation is still open.

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The Barnahus, the comprehensive services that the Generalitat (Catalan Government) launched for minor victims of sexual violence, are severely understaffed. Of the twenty-six professionals working in the fourteen homes across Catalonia, only six remain in their positions, while the remaining positions are either vacant or the new staff has not yet been trained. This situation is causing delays in child care and an overload of work for the professionals who remain.

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The Generalitat (Catalan Government) is seeking families with children who are entitled to child benefits and who, for various reasons, are not receiving them. This is one of the measures proposed by the Committee of Experts for Transformation and Social Innovation (CETIS), which a few months ago was tasked by the Ministry of Social Rights with finding ways to reduce the number of children who are entitled to benefits. the child poverty rate, which stands at 34% and which, in the words of Minister Mònica Martínez Bravo, is "persistent and higher" than the European Union average (20%), and even that of Spain (29.2%). In fact, only Bulgaria (35%) surpasses it.

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The modernization of nursing homes, homes for people with disabilities, and mental health centers will have to wait. The Generalitat (Catalan government) is giving centers another year to demonstrate that their facilities and services meet the necessary standards to be able to offer places to beneficiaries of the dependency law. This accreditation process was originally scheduled to end next month, but the Department of Social Rights and Inclusion has postponed the deadline until October 2026 to facilitate the correction of the deficiencies that currently prevent them from obtaining approval and prevent their closure.

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They say they are in the reserve, that they have taken the summer as a "break" before accepting a new foster child who, for various reasons, cannot live with their parents. Josep Sala and Esther Bertran are teachers who during the 1990s had taken in children from Bosnia and the Sahara in the summer, and who, once retired, invest time, effort, and enthusiasm in taking in children under the guardianship of the general management of the Prevention and Protection of Children and Adolescents (DGPPIA)).

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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.

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More than a hundred young people who were formerly under the care of the Generalitat (Catalan government) have complained of feeling like the scapegoat for poor management by the administration and for the Audit Office's criticism of the €167 million in social benefits paid to people who no longer met the requirements. As reported by ARA, the Directorate General for the Prevention and Protection of Children and Adolescents (DGPPIA) has begun to investigate the matter. Send hundreds of these children messages demanding thousands of euros for "undue non-payments" and gives them ten days to present their allegations. These amounts exceed 10,000 euros, and in many cases even 30,000.

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The General Directorate for the Prevention and Protection of Children and Adolescents (DGPPIA, which replaces the DGAIA) has begun sending emails to young people who have left care to claim alleged "undue payments" of the benefits to which, by law, they are entitled from the age of majority until the age of 23. According to ARA, "hundreds" have been sent and the amounts claimed amount to more than 10,000 euros and, in some cases, the figure exceeds 36,000 euros. These messages are sent just two weeks after the The Audit Office estimates undue non-payments at 167 million euros. granted by the Department of Social Rights and Inclusion to some 230,000 families, of which 4.7 million (2.8%) corresponded to those given to young people who had spent part of their childhood in the care system. They are demanding around 30,000 euros. "I wanted to reassure him by telling him it must have been a mistake," explains the 22-year-old. "They're demanding that I be a high school student and I haven't had any absences that long, and I don't have any negative reports from my mentor," she tells this newspaper indignantly. "It seems like they're going to screw the weakest of us by putting spokes in our wheels; "Who can return these amounts?" asks the girl, who claims cases with "exaggerated amounts" have caused these young people to become nervous and have made their phones and WhatsApp messages explode. The refund file, once the review process is complete, must be reimbursed by the interested party. Nor will they understand that they have ten days from receiving the email to make the relevant allegations and submit the documentation. "Many will be left as true defaulters," she laments.

In the report, Ombudsman Maria Àngels Cabacés had found irregularities in the collection of the former care benefit from young people who were working or living outside of Catalonia, criteria that exclude them from being eligible for the aid. She attributed these improper payments to the department's own technological deficiencies in updating the beneficiaries' data and to the fact that it does not share data with the Treasury or Social Security. She recalculated the amount of the benefit she should have received. In response, she claims, she received a "you continue collecting the benefit and you'll notify the Treasury Department next year's tax return." They were unable to survive, unaware that, once they receive the benefit, since they already receive a salary, they will not be entitled to collect it, or at least not in full. She has a certified receipt.

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The Minister of Social Rights and Inclusion, Mònica Martínez Bravo, defended this Wednesday in Parliament the capacity of the DGAIA to protect the minor sexually exploited by a pedophilia network, although she also admitted that she hadn't done enough to spare him the pain. With the report prepared by the department's legal services, the minister appeared before the committee at her own request, not with the intention of "finding culprits," she clarified, but with the desire to rekindle a system that "many years ago" needed a refoundation"The system protected the minor as best it could, and despite the support of professionals, it failed, and nothing can compensate for the damage done to her during her adolescence," she stressed.

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The news about the failure of the DGAIA (General Directorate for Child and Adolescent Care), part of the Department of Social Rights, to adequately fulfill its responsibilities has shaken public opinion and led to nominally radical reactions from the responsible department's counselor. Throughout this very sad episode, I have missed some elements of realism, which have sometimes crept in through the cracks in the news and interviews. I am referring to the complaint—or denunciation, to be precise—of the appalling working conditions of the people entrusted with the extremely delicate task of caring for the children and adolescents who have ended up under the guardianship of the DGAIA.

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This Tuesday's protest is the second in two months that the Union of Mothers with Functional Diversity (SinMaDiF) has called before the Ministry of Social Rights and Inclusion to demand more financial and human resources to cover the needs of dependent people and their primary caregivers, a role that falls in 90% of cases on mothers, women, or women. They denounce that "the abandonment" they suffer is institutional sexist violence because, when a family member is diagnosed, "rights go out the window" and the family is left with the "horrible loneliness" of having to seek services, resources, and support to get by. "We can't take it anymore!" they exclaim.

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The humanitarian emergency caused by a large influx of unaccompanied minors (at a rate of around 100 young people per day) and the years of budgetary extensions in the Generalitat (Catalan government) limited the capacity to award new services. Faced with this situation, the former leadership of the Department of Labor, Social Affairs, and Families argued in Parliament this Wednesday that it had to opt for emergency contracts with entities between 2016 and 2020, a formula reserved only for very exceptional situations. However, the Audit Office considers that these contracts were made without sufficient justification in the context of a national emergency, catastrophe, or immediate need to assist people in danger.

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David Rodríguez, recently elected vice-dean of the College of Social Work of Catalonia, warns of the shortcomings of the child protection system and defends a Structural reform of the General Directorate of Child and Adolescent Care (DGAIA) focused on prevention, humanization, and active listening to minors and families.

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One day after the new immigration regulations approved by the Spanish government came into force, the Department of Social Rights has sent city councils instructions on the two new reports that municipal technicians must prepare so that migrants can begin the regularization process. The Spanish government's text contemplates new ways to request regularization and reduces bureaucracy in the process, although it also leaves Legal loopholes for asylum seekers whose applications are rejected.

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The Minister of Social Rights and Inclusion, Mònica Martínez Bravo, is in a hurry to close the Scandals affecting the General Directorate of Child and Adolescent Care (DGAIA), which have once again put the child protection system in the spotlight. In less than 24 hours, the regional minister brought forward the timeline for the presentation of the "refoundation" of the DGAIA: while at Monday's meeting with the third sector and professional associations, the department gave a deadline of between two and three months to have a proposal ready, this Tuesday morning the regional spokesperson, Silvia Paneque, shortened the period to between three. Finally, Martínez Bravo concluded that the plan will be made public "next week."

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