The Cabildo announces the unblocking of the project for the new Care Center for the Mentally Disabled, the initials of CAMP La Cuesta, to meet the demands of families. The insular councilor for Social Action, Marián Franquet, explained the new design of the standing building for three years on a plot of The Sobradillo (Santa Cruz) to thus respond to the needs of parents of people with intellectual disabilities.
The new center that was projected with the initial idea of increasing the places from 30 to 50 was stopped three years ago due to problems with the winning company.
Franquet anticipates that the property will include residential spaces and a therapeutic pool, in addition to resuming issues that had been deleted from the previous design, approved in 2016, to lower costs, such as the kitchen, laundry or green areas.
The counselor added that their demands and suggestions have been taken into account in order to adjust it as much as possible to the real needs of the group.
“This center will improve care for those who attend daily, as well as the services offered”explains Marián Franquet, who recalls that there is a day center in La Cuesta, but that it has become too small to provide service to all users in the area.
In this context, he explained that the project “will respond to the demands of fathers and mothers who have sons and daughters with intellectual disabilities and fear what their future will be, not knowing what will happen to them when they can no longer care for them.”
The new facility will also have residential spaces, which will allow full-time care as needed. The future center will also favor the creation of new coexistence units, which also allows continuing with the new model of care for dependent people that is promoted from the area.
The counselor recalls that the problems arise at the end of the mandate of the previous island government, which in 2018 awarded the execution of the works “to a company that submitted an offer that was too low, both economically and in terms of time,” Franquet points out, which “It made it impossible to carry it out within the 21-month period established in the contract.
After this time, the current island government team took the appropriate administrative measures to reach an agreement with the winning company and dissolve the contract. Subsequently, the procedure was declared urgent in order to resume work as soon as possible.
“Promoting the CAMP La Cuesta center has been one of the priorities of this Government,” he assesses, although “we have had to face negotiations with the awardee and administrative processes after the reckless dismissal to unblock this project.” Once the Island Corporation receives it from the architect, an act scheduled for February, the bidding process for the execution of the works will begin, which will be completed throughout the year 2023.
The work began in November 2018 in a construction located in the area of Volcán de La Corona and Volcán Las Arenas streets, in the Southwest neighborhood of the capital, on a 4,246-square-meter plot. The building, which was left as a skeleton, had a budget of 3.8 million euros and the initial idea was that it could be finished by the middle of the second half of 2020, something that did not happen.
