SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 7 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Cabildo de Tenerife and the University of La Laguna have presented today Tuesday the first Chair on Life Cycles and Older People in the Canary Islands, which contemplates the implementation of training, dissemination and research activities to improve the quality of life of people over 65 years of age.
The Minister of Social Action, Marián Franquet, explained that the creation of the Chair, at the proposal of the ULL, “helps us to advance on a priority issue for the Cabildo, such as knowing, understanding and working with the elderly”, in a demographic moment marked by the increase in the elderly population of the island, which has gone from 87,113 people in 2000 to 148,632 people in 2019.
“This chair, which will have an initial validity of four years, allows us to have the necessary instrument to make present and future policies based on knowledge and not on intuition, with which we can act here and now, but also plan actions for the new generations of the elderly”, assured the counselor.
For her part, the rector of the ULL, Rosa Aguilar, thanked the Cabildo for its collaboration, “as a great ally of the University”, and stressed the importance of “changing the attitude of society in general towards this group and continuing to work , through the chair, in the development of specific activities that contribute to a comprehensive improvement of their life”.
“With the agreement, the success of the model of institutional chairs that our university has opted for in recent years is reaffirmed and that facilitates a more direct transfer of academic findings to society, enabling almost immediate results,” added the rector .
The insular director of Innovation, Planning and Social Action Strategy, Ascensión Bacallado, who is part of the Mixed Commission of this Chair, stressed that its implementation is part of the Conecta Mayores program, promoted by the Cabildo and based on listening activated the elderly, their needs and concerns.
In this context, he added that the Chair was created with the objective of covering the different realities and vital circumstances of people over 65 who reside on the island”, through a dozen thematic axes, among which is non-responsible loneliness sought, the ethics of care, intergenerational communication, the inclusion of older migrants, learning new technologies or human and sexual rights, among others
“It is a chair for the elderly but also for health professionals and in the field of education and for any other group that has to do with people over 65,” said Bacallado, who announced that as of this The first training activities included in the chair will be carried out in February.
Specifically, there are two training activities planned: one aimed at the elderly group, such as the Life Cycles, Health and Human Sexuality course, and another for health and educational professionals, entitled Learning to care for the elderly: ethics, feelings and tenderness.
In addition, a Specific Mention and Ethics of Care has been created to distinguish the end-of-degree and master’s degree projects of ULL students in which care for the elderly is addressed in an innovative way.
Regarding the research work, the director of the Chair, Fernando Barragán, explained that the objective for this year is “to carry out an in-depth qualitative study about what services are currently being offered to the elderly population, what use is being made of them and what degree of satisfaction they generate, working with women and men separately”.
The forecast, as he pointed out, is to have the research completed in October for its subsequent publication in a book.
“It is a chair with important ethical ambitions, for which we will have the support of internationally renowned experts and professionals,” said Fernando Barragán, who explained that for the development of the different programmed activities there will be a multidisciplinary team in which the health professionals, education professionals, social workers and experts in law and pedagogy from both the ULL and four other European universities.
