The economic crisis unleashed by the COVID pandemic continues to take its toll on chicharrera families, many of whom, far from recovering, have had to resort to social services that they had never needed before. That was the case of 3,056 families who, in 2021, turned to social services in the capital for the first time. This was reported yesterday by the Councilor for Social Action of Santa Cruz, Rosario González, during the appearance requested by the PSOE to report the incidents that the attention to users of the Social Work Units (UTS) are suffering.
In the balance of last year, informed the councilor, that 60,778 attentions were carried out through the UTS of the capital. As for the benefits that were processed, these exceeded the figure of 110,000, with an investment of 12 million euros. To this amount, González explained, another 12 million were added in essential contracts such as home help, nursery schools, day centers, municipal shelter, soup kitchen, etc.
Former socialist mayor Patricia Hernández questioned González about the delays in granting appointments at the UTS, which in some cases can take up to two months. The mayor responsible for the IMAS defended that this is the maximum period that a user can wait for an ordinary procedure, since emergencies are attended practically on the fly. She assured that the average can be around 20 or 25 days, “but it depends a lot on the UTS in question, due to the number of users they serve.”
