SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, March 17 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Canary Islands lowered the dependency waiting list by 28.9% last year thanks to the first year of deployment of the shock plan launched by the central government, according to the XXIII Opinion of the State Observatory of the Dependency, prepared by the Association of Directors and Managers of Social Services, and made public this Friday.
In addition, the islands were among the ten communities that ‘made cash’ and lowered their own resources in the system, leaving the average dependency expenditure per person at 722 euros, only ahead of Asturias.
Although the Canary Islands ranks penultimate among the autonomous communities on the assessment scale, with 2.9 points, the association considers that it has improved by one point in the last year, although the archipelago is still at the bottom in the average time of wait for the resolution of the benefit with 977 days.
Last year, the islands were the community in which the number of benefit beneficiaries increased the most, with 29.5% more, and more services were found than there were before the pandemic.
Regarding the ‘limbo of dependency’, that is, with more people pending to receive benefits, the Canary Islands ranks as the fourth autonomous community with 16.93%. In total there are 17,285 people on the waiting list of which 10,214 are pending assessment.
The report also states that for every million euros of public spending on dependency in the Canary Islands, more than 48 jobs were created.
In the country as a whole, a total of 353,965 people are waiting to receive care at the agency, 8,799 less than in 2021 and at this rate, “it would take 35 years to ensure that there is no person waiting for any procedure,” they point out from the association.
In addition, more than 45,000 dependent people died on the waiting list between December 2021 and November 2022.
Specifically, there are 131,810 people waiting to be assessed, 7,214 more than the 124,596 the previous year, and 177,423 with the recognized right but waiting to receive care, 15,923 fewer people than the previous year. To these are added 22,829 people with a PIA resolution and who do not receive benefits or services and 21,903 that the CCAAs have not registered and are pending assessment.
“The budgetary increase of the Government of Spain has not been sufficient to cover the objectives of the shock plan: neither the reduction of the waiting list nor the increase in the intensities. This is tremendously worrying,” said the president of the Association of Directors and Managers of Social Services, José Manuel Ramírez, this Friday, at a press conference.
Specifically, he has attributed it to three reasons, the first, the “negligence and inexperience of some autonomous communities that are not being agile” or are feeling “so stingy that they have cut the budget” despite receiving more funds from the Government, showing a “ruthless” attitude.
55 MILLION STOP SPENDING
Another reason is, as indicated, the “bureaucratic web” that is reflected in the 344 days it takes to receive care, almost a year. And, thirdly, he has pointed out the fact that, of the Government’s budget increase in 2022 for dependency, 55 million euros were left unspent.
According to the document, consulted by Europa Press, 44.6% of neglected people (80,862) are dependents with Grades III or II, that is, they need extensive and continuous support.
Although by regulation, the maximum period to resolve a file is six months (180 days), currently, it takes 344 days on average, and five communities exceed 12 months (Canary Islands, Andalusia, Murcia, Extremadura and Galicia).
In any case, the report also highlights that there are 91,295 people served more than at the beginning of 2022. In this sense, the authors have pointed out that after the “disastrous” years of the pandemic, “the shock plan confirms a change in trend “.
By province, the Communities with the greatest ‘dependency limbo’, that is, with the most people waiting to receive benefits, are: Catalonia (27.1%), La Rioja (18.9%) and the Basque Country (17.5%). %); and those that least, Castilla y León (0.18%), Castilla-La Mancha (3.71%) and Aragón (4%).
INCREASINGLY ‘LOW COST’ SERVICES
On the other hand, the authors of the study value that the benefits and services are each year “more ‘low cost’ and insufficient” for the needs of people in a situation of dependency. Thus, for example, they indicate that the economic benefits for family care have an average monthly amount of 234.96 euros; and the related benefit to pay for a residential care place ranges from 445.5 euros per month (Grade II) to 550.8 euros per month (Grade III).
They also add that home help presents average hourly intensity of 33.45 hours per month, 57.1 hours per month for large dependents, which represents two and a half hours a day from Monday to Friday, an intensity “clearly insufficient “, according to the authors of the Observatory.
In addition, the data shows that, during the interannual period between December 2021 and November 2022, 45,360 people died on the dependency waiting lists –19,661 people pending resolution of the degree of dependency and 25,699 without having been able to exercise Your rights–. This means that more than 124 dependent people die every day without having received benefits or services. “20% of people have died waiting,” lamented the authors.
On the other hand, the opinion maintains that, for the first time, the overall cost of the system exceeded 10,000 million euros, reaching 10,495 million euros; and adds that the direct cost of the benefits and services delivered during 2022 amounts to 9,717 million euros, of which 7,723 million were assumed by the Public Administrations and the rest (1,995 million) is contributed by the users in the form of regulated co-payment (20.5%).
Of the direct public spending in dependency in 2022, the report specifies that the General State Administration has increased financing by 1,842 million euros, reaching 33.9%, while the Autonomous Communities have reduced their contribution and decreased their financing percentage to 66.1%.
The authors of the study highlight that the cumulative cut of the dependent General State Administration, which was put to an end by the Shock Plan, has been 6,321 million euros.
THE BUREAUCRACY, A BRAKE
In this sense, they emphasize that the Government of Spain “complies” with the budget increase of the Shock Plan for the Dependency but “the bureaucracy and lack of expertise of some regional governments do not allow the objective of reducing the waiting list, increasing benefits and services and not even execute the budget increase”.
Specifically, they denounce that, in the first year of the shock plan, ten autonomous community governments “made cash” with the budget increase: Aragón, Canarias, Castilla y León, Castilla La Mancha, Extremadura, Galicia, Region of Murcia, Community Foral de Navarra, Basque Country and La Rioja.
In this way, the authors of the report indicate that “only” there are 15,923 fewer people on the waiting list who, added to the 38,807 in 2021, do not reach the 60,000 that they set as a goal for the first year, and warn that, at the rate of last year it would take eleven years to achieve full attention.
