Candelaria boasts of its social welfare policies and in them the attention to its elders stands out. “One of our main axes in municipal policy is care for the elderly, which is done from a cross-cutting and comprehensive point of view,” highlights the mayor of Candelaria, Mari Brito, who points out that the elderly in the municipality have in the City Council support for issues such as physiotherapy, speech therapy, cognitive development, computer literacy, home help, sports and leisure, programs created and intended exclusively for them, serving more than 600 elderly among all the actions and programs that are carried out from the Town Hall.
With all this, the municipality, with a population of more than 5,000 people over 65 years of age, is working on the diagnosis of the elderly to join the Network of Citizens and Friendly Communities with the elderly of the Ministry of Social Rights.
The councilor, Olivia Pérez, advances that this year the Reconnecting Candelaria project has been launched as a novelty, which was born with the aim of repairing the physical and emotional consequences of the pandemic and avoiding or stopping cognitive degeneration through psychoneuroimmunology, neuroscience and vagus nerve stimulation. “An activity that is part of the actions aimed at creating safety networks in which the elderly can rely on their day to day,” Pérez points out.
In addition, in recent years a novel proposal has been developed, accompaniment to alleviate situations of loneliness or dependency, for which collaborative networks have been created through the Fundación Candelaria Solidaria through the Sonrisas Mayores project.
Fundamental are the actions carried out by the Comprehensive Recovery Center (CERI), which cares for the elderly with physiotherapy, speech therapy and therapeutic animation or Home Help, which currently has 147 users. Likewise, the Araya Comprehensive Care Unit for people with Alzheimer’s, managed by Afate (Association of Relatives and Caregivers of Alzheimer’s Patients and other dementias), which is included in the Insular Ring of Social Policies of the Cabildo.
Another of the essential services is telecare, which allows the person to, in the event of any eventuality or emergency, by pressing a button, the person can, from anywhere in their home and without having to travel, enter into “hands-free” verbal communication with a center specialized care. The service, to which 33 people are assigned, has a budget of more than 30,000 euros.
In the field of active leisure, the Sports and Health program is offered, which makes it easier for the elderly in all the town’s centers to practice physical activity adapted to their state of health, or the unique initiative El que no corre… baila, which returns this Sunday, after the break in August, which is a meeting point for the elderly in which to establish emotional bonds with other people of the same age or Better Health at the Best Age, in which preventive care was carried out to improve well-being physical, social and mental health of people over 60 years of age. To which must be added the computer literacy courses created especially for them or the different activities of the Popular University of Candelaria in which they actively participate.
Finally, it is worth mentioning the close and constant collaboration with the Antón Guanche Seniors Association, as well as the community tables of each of the towns in the municipality.
