rbs_gb

Exactly LynnR read down to the last part of your link

Criterios de participación en su financiación.

La participación en la financiación del servicio por parte de la persona usuaria está condicionada por su capacidad económica personal en los términos previstos en las disposiciones vigentes.

Everything is co-pago, including adult social care.

growinspain

here in Valencia and even in the suburbs - a lot of old people - the carers you see out and about pushing wheelchairs or sitting on a bench are mostly south or latin americans working "cash in hand".

Waiting lists for the state sponsored old folks home in Valencia can range up to 6 months also; even in the most dire circumstances.. Sometimes, maybe most of the time the doctor and/or courts have to declare the person unfit for them to even be considered.

Lynn R

Exactly as it is in the UK (except that the costs are higher there) for people whose assets are above the threshold to get local authority funded assistance - and that threshold is not very high. 23k for residential care.

My sister worked in a care home in the North West of the UK (so not one of the most expensive areas) before she died 4 years ago. Even at that time the fees for residential care were at least 1k sterling per week, much higher for their dementia unit. Their fees now start at 1,230 per week, or from 1,440 for dementia care. The maximum cost which the local authorities pay are much lower than the actual cost, so self funding residents are charged more to make up the shortfall, and increasingly relatives are asked to pay top up fees.

Self-funders charged £12,500 a year more than LA funded care home residents (carehomeprofessional.com)

This is the residencia nearest to me in Spain. I know someone whose wife has been cared for there for several years (she has dementia) and two others who had a relative cared for there before they died. In all cases their pension was used to pay some of the fees and the remainder was met by Social Services. The current cost of an individual room with bathroom is €2,857 per month (obviously higher fees will apply for dementia patients or others with intensive nursing needs).

Centro Socio Sanitario SANYSOL (inforesidencias.com)

Ronnyone

I think the okupas need to be better handled but that doesnt mean simply making people homeless. It is only fair that landlords should be curtailed to some degree. You shouldn't be able to simply evict tenants without at least 6 months notification and even then it should only be if you are selling or intend to live there. Also people have to understand it is only vacant property that protected for okupas - not your homes. That is not to say it is not abused- it is. But I think it would help if there was more social housing ( which Sanchez proposed but will now be stopped) and something similar to housing benefit to assist people on low wages. Also okupas is not new- it was there under PP and they basically did nothing- that is they made no attempt to help speed up the legal process of eviction which is another side of the problem. Remember this too 61% of Spanish people have more than one property- meaning a huge amount of shelter is available out there and some of it is abandoned for decades.

Lynn R

Long delays in getting assessments carried out and assistance provided are also common in the UK.

Older people are often waiting far too long for the social care they need (ageuk.org.uk)

Social care waiting lists up 37% in 6 months, finds ADASS - Community Care

Two years ago my Ayuntamiento was employing 217 carers for their home care service (and they are not south or latin american people working cash in hand.

La empresa municipal de Vélez amplía el servicio de ayuda a domicilio de 280 a 330 usuarios | Diario Sur

rbs_gb

That's my point LynnR that if you get down to your last 23k in the UK you get pretty much everything found for you. The IPREM system in Spain means that your finances get eaten considerably faster because of the co-payment system. Allow me to quote this:

En el copago por servicios en un centro o en el domicilio se garantiza que el beneficiario se quede con una renta mínima para sus gastos personales, entre un 19 y un 20% del IPREM -600 euros este año-, es decir unos 120 euros al mes, y un copago máximo que no puede sobrepasar el 90% del precio de referencia del servicio. Además, a quienes perciban ingresos iguales o inferiores al IPREM se les excluye del copago de todas las prestaciones de la dependencia, salvo en el caso de las residencias –el recurso más caro- donde todos las personas tienen que aportar, en la mayoría de los casos, en torno a un 75% de sus emolumentos, por muy bajos que estos sean.

In other words, you will be paying for everything you have once you have more than 120 euros per month left to survive on for your personal expenses. The Spanish system is designed to drain your resources very quickly. The vast majjority of the care you are observing is paid for by famlly. That is the reason why so many families have no choice but to keep aged and infirm relatives within the family home. As an election issue, it just is not going to come up, but the question from spainrico asked what we woulld like to see. This remains what I would like to see changed, even though neither the right nor the left will have it on their agendas.

Lynn R

Again, similar to the system in the UK whereby once a person's assets have dipped below 23,250 (because they have spent everything else on paying for their care) their pension is taken towards the cost of local authority funded care and they are left with the Personal Expenses Allowance which is currently 28.30 per week in England (slightly higher in Wales and Scotland). I mentioned earlier the case of a man I know whose wife has been cared for in a Residencia for several years (more than six but can't remember exactly how long). They are not wealthy, but he still lives in their family home and told us that his wife's pension (not just a state pension, she had an administrative post with a UK University so would have a decent occupational pension but not a huge one) pays for her care in the Residencia I posted a link to and he does not have to pay anything towards it out of his own income. They don't have children so there is no possibility of a contribution being paid by anyone else.

I still believe my resources would be drained much more quickly if I had to pay the equivalent of €73k per year for a care home in the UK as a self funder (the current cost of the one my sister worked in) rather than just under €35k here (which is the current cost of the home I linked to near where I live in Spain).

rbs_gb

Thanks for taking the time LynnR to put all this together. I'm fascinated because what you relate is going against what I'm seeing here in Cantabria and what I also hear in Aragon, so whether there is a regional variation at play here. Here in Cantabria I can relate from six friends plus my own family who have effectively done all their own care for aged parents. In our case we had a rota system to look after mum-in-law with each part of the family spending a week living at the house. There was never any social services help involved. Last night we were five at dinner, and I brought the subject up. One friend looked after his housebound dad for more than ten years without any help from social services. He himself is now severely less mobile after kidney problems and pays a cuban lady to come and do the domestic chores etc. He got a "blue badge" permit a few months ago, but when I asked what help he gets from social services, he said none. A similar situation with my extended family in Zaragoza, where the daughter lives in Valencia and travels back each weekend to look after her 93 year old mum, while during the week her brother visits daily. Maybe the families up here just work differently, or social services are very different, but it is curious how my experience is so different from yours.

Lynn R

I know that the system here (Andalucia, I can't speak for anywhere else) is not perfect, there are long delays in getting assessments carried out for example (but that applies equally in the UK). Some families do indeed provide all the care for their elderly relatives. How much that is because they have tried to get help from social services and cannot, and how much is because they want to provide the care themselves or the elderly person will not accept care from non family members, I don't know. My aunt, who died aged 95 in 2020, flatly refused to contemplate having any help from outside carers and got extremely angry when I said it was not fair to expect my sister (who provided most of the increasing amount of help she needed) to carry on doing it when her own health was declining. She was on Pension Credit and so would have been local authority funded, but she just would not have it.

One British person I know is now paying someone privately for home care as he has become increasingly disabled. I asked if he had sought help from Social Services and he said no "because they want to know all the details of your finances"! He has, incidentally, been receiving Spanish disability benefit for a long time as he worked in Spain before becoming ill.

rbs_gb

Curious interview with Vice President and Finance Minister Nadie Calviño yesterday where she confirmed she will stand as an independent rather than going on the PSOE lists. It´s not new for her, and she has made clear that she supports Sánchez, but the decision to remain as an independent is still strange for someone who has held those positions.

Ronnyone

I didn't know that- a shame, I think she is really good. Have you heard her English it's really good ! She is a clever person and exactly the type Sanchez needed. I am getting really worried about Vox, especially at weekends, the way they start to dress with and more military green being worn. Abascal wears these tight green combat style jackets and you know fine well what it signals to his supporters - Franco is alive and so is the Falangists.
Are the PP not in discussion with Vox in one of the municipaliases they won last week? - and Abascal is having none of this second player role that PP want.
I know it is extreme but it's almost like something out of the Hilter playback - where Hitler crept into power by a coalition then basically took over by having all the momentum on his side.

rbs_gb

https://www.rtve.es/noticias/2023060.../2448416.shtml

Comments about the falange are just the same as those about the commie block on the left and Yolanda Diaz will never be free of her Communist Party roots. The Spanish voted left but got an extreme left coalition, and now they are going back to the right. They´ve tried extreme left wing politics and seems they didn´t like it. This has not been a classic PSOE government, absolutely nothing like anything that occurred under Gonzalez or Zapatero.

rbs_gb

The social housing proposals by Sánchez were just last minute political headlining during the recent election, They never had any real substance to any of them. No one would want to live in places that haven´t been built yet and nowhere in those proposals were an indication of the remaining infrastructure such as schools, shops, medical facilities etc that a brown field site would need. I have to give credit to my local BANES council in the UK who released land to a developer for 26 properties to be built. Of those, 6 will be built for the council and rented out thereby increasing the housing stock and effectively the build costs will be paid for by the purchasers of the other properties . It is such a simple idea on how to get public and private sectors working together. Imagine a developer in Spain being told that say 25% of the apartment block had to be ceded to the local council for social housing........

Ronnyone

Yes I do think POSE have been forced to go with some of the extreme left to function as a government but I don't feel that the extreme left in Spain is a threat to people's way of life in the way that the extreme right seem to deliberately want to outlaw persons freedom- no abortions, no gay marriages, no recognition of non- binary, no immigrants. It all seems rather vengeful and passively aggressive. I do think though POSE should have rejected Bildu as soon as those lists appeared.

DLC

Vivienda de Protección Oficial in Spain, almost every medium to large development I've read a about has a certain amount of VPO buildings.

I've also not heard of things like this happening in Spain.