Who will take care of our disabled son or daughter when we are gone? Answering this question is what led, 20 years ago, Nicolás Soriano and Georgette Bugnion to create the Canarian Sonsoles Soriano Bugnion Foundation, an entity aimed at ensuring that people with disabilities whom the foundation accompanies have a full and that they can advance in their life projects. Soriano and Bugnion’s daughter gives name to an organization that this September 19 celebrates two decades of life. The response that the foundation has given to those families who face the future of their children with disabilities when they are no longer here is: “We will be by their side.”
The mission during these 20 years, carried out with perseverance, has been to guarantee support for people with intellectual disabilities in all aspects of their daily lives.
To achieve these objectives, numerous programs have been launched, such as support for the exercise of legal capacity of people with intellectual disabilities. Also the family care service; support for independent living of people with intellectual disabilities; shared paths: promotion, strengthening and training of volunteers; supports for empowerment and autonomy, and open parenthesis!
The foundation has been able to carry out its work thanks to the support and collaboration of public and private organizations such as the Government of the Canary Islands; Tenerife Council; Insular Institute of Social and Socio-Health Care of the Cabildo de Tenerife (IASS); Municipal Institute of Social Care of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (IMAS); Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council; La Laguna City Council; La Caixa Foundation; Caixabank Social Work; CajaCanarias Foundation; Cajasiete Pedro Modesto Campos Foundation; Emmasa Foundation; Cofarte; Capisa Group; CIO-Western Islands Company; Fundación Disa, and Fundación Cepsa, among others, as well as that of many people, entities and protective and collaborating companies.
The foundation is a member of Liber-Association of decision-making support entities, Plena Inclusion and Plena Canarias.
The provision of personal and social, legal and economic support, and the implementation of other employment, leisure and free time support have been aimed at promoting the empowerment and well-being of the people supported by the foundation.
In the design of these strategies, there has been a multidisciplinary work team (14 members) and with the support, in turn, of a board of 14 people, also made up of profiles that have contributed to responding to the demands posed to legal, medical, educational level…, as well as with the support and selfless work of 45 volunteers. This joint work is undoubtedly behind the successes that support the foundation, which supports 50 people and in 2022 advised around 700.
A mission that has been rewarded with various recognitions, such as the one that came last November when the foundation was a finalist for the best collective initiative in the CaixaBank Private Banking Solidarity Awards, an award received during a gala held in the city of Valencia.
Transformation
This organization has not stopped growing since its launch, knowing how to adapt to a changing reality. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic was a difficult time. The crisis scenario that opened overnight tested the strength of the links that the foundation had been weaving with the people it supports, a work supported by the figure of the volunteer, another basic piece in the machine. of this great family.
On the other hand, the foundation has been able to adapt to the civil and procedural reform after the change in regulations a few years ago (Law 8/2021) and which has meant a substantial change in the lives of people with disabilities.
This reform has meant a true revolution, a social transformation, a change of outlook. Its objective is the adaptation of the Spanish legal system to the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, made in New York on December 13, 2006 and ratified by Spain in 2008.