Almeria Provincial Council serves more than 5,500 users throughout the province through its Home Help Service, which is carried out in municipalities with less than 20,000 inhabitants. The main objective of this service is to improve the quality of life of the users, to promote their autonomy and independence, and to make it easier for them to stay at home.
The President of the Almeria Provincial Council, Javier A. García, visited two users of this service to see first-hand the care they receive, their degree of satisfaction and to learn from their experiences. In Lucainena de las Torres, María del Carmen Martínez was visited, and in Cóbdar, Luz Yepes. During the visits, the president was accompanied by the mayors of these two towns.
The President said that “I was very happy to visit and talk to two exemplary Almerians, María del Carmen and Luz, because they represent that generation of fellow countrymen who managed, with their sacrifice and effort, to move this land forward and today we can enjoy a prosperous province. Their words are pure wisdom and it is to people like them that we owe everything we are”.
In this regard, Javier A. García highlighted the Home Help Service as “one of the great tools available to the Almeria Provincial Council to equalise opportunities between Almeria residents, wherever they live, and that elderly and/or dependent people can have access to the same services as in a large city. In addition, thanks to programmes like this one, we are able to fight against depopulation because people like María del Carmen and Luz can continue to live in their home, in their village”.
Finally, the President of the Provincial Council emphasised the commitment and firm commitment of the Provincial Council to Social Services throughout the province, especially in the wake of the social consequences of the pandemic: “as we have maintained from the beginning, we will spare no effort in caring for the people of Almeria who need it most so that no one is left behind”.
The Diputación’s Home Help Service has more than 1,400 home helpers throughout the province to attend to all users. The profile of the users of this service is 35% of people at risk of unwanted loneliness, 30% live in rural areas, 50% have a degree II of dependency and 20% have a degree III and 11% of the users have been using this service for more than ten years.
In addition, this service includes a series of care programmes to make it more effective in specific situations such as mental health intervention, administrative legal issues, social inclusion, telemedicine, unwanted loneliness, safe home, cognitive stimulation… These services are prescribed from the 13 Social Services centres in the province of Almeria.