The City Council of Santa Cruz, through the Municipal Institute of Social Care (IMAS)allocates about three million each year to the care of homelesswhich makes it one of the cities in the Canary Islands with the most resources to alleviate the homelessness situation, as highlighted by the local Council.
Thus, in addition to the Municipal Care Center, it has a Minimum Demand Center, to which are added supervised apartments, pensions and other emergency resources.
Likewise, the Corporation, through the Social Action area, has various intervention and support programs to each of the people who are homeless, which allows it to provide them with comprehensive care, with the City Council highlighting that it has managed to get more than a hundred people off the streets and into the comprehensive system of care for this collective.
The mayor of the capital, José Manuel Bermúdez, emphasized “the importance of Santa Cruz’s commitment to the homeless throughout the year, with comprehensive care for this group, with the Mobile Outreach Units (UMA), the which are added to those who are cared for in the Municipal Reception Center and the housing solutions that seek the integration of people in every sense.”
For her part, the Councilor for Social Action, Charín González, highlighted “how essential networking has been, the coordination between the different resources that directly or indirectly serve homeless people.”
UMA
The service of the Mobile Outreach Unit stands out, which has two teams dedicated to caring for people who are homeless and who spend the night in settlements, one of the few of these characteristics that are provided throughout the State. This service constitutes the first gateway to social services for people who find themselves in an extreme situation of social exclusion, and whose work allowed, in 2022, to serve almost 400 people. Proof of the work carried out by the UMA is the number of people who managed to leave the streets in 2022, more than a hundred, after achieving the objectives of their social intervention plan.
Likewise, the Comprehensive Care Service for Homeless People focuses the social intervention process on the person and for this purpose it has various programs, carrying out during 2022 more than 40,000 services with 624 people from the Social, Educational and Social Care Service. Psychological. We have worked with them on a personalized insertion plan, they have been accompanied in a process of recovery from deterioration in the different dimensions of quality of life and in overcoming the circumstances of vulnerability. In addition, this service carries out pharmacy assessments of users without sufficient resources to purchase medication.
Regarding the temporary accommodation offered by the City Council, the Day Reception Service served 292 different people in 2022. The wide spectrum of cases also means that this service directs specific actions to people with functional disabilities, who represent 43% of the people served; others with addiction to toxic substances, 38%, or people over 65 years of age and with a certain level of requirement, which in 2022 has suffered a significant increase, 15%. Also young people, between 18 and 30 years old, 11%. Meanwhile, the Night Reception Service provided 23,455 services to a total of 593 people.
Added to all this is the Social, Educational and Psychological Care Service that is provided to all homeless people who are cared for by municipal social services. Thus, last year, a total of 289 people were able to access different public and private accommodation resources, of which 21 of them went to permanent accommodation resources such as socio-health centers or supervised apartments, 29 moved to temporary accommodation or protection resources and 82 entered health resources on a temporary basis.
In turn, 109 people accessed a private home after the intervention developed by the service and 48 moved outside the municipality.
