The ADEPSI Canary Islands Support Foundation is in charge of managing the Social Information Service for people with functional diversity in the Arrecife Courts, a pioneering initiative in the archipelago that began to be carried out on January 31, 2024 and seeks to address the bureaucratic barriers faced by people with functional diversity.
After a year in operation, this service has assisted 102 people directly. The hours of operation extend between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. every Wednesday of the year and is located at the counter set up at the entrance of the Arrecife judicial building. In total, in the last period they have carried out 46 days of attention to the public, with an average of two people attended per day.
Those responsible for this service inform people with functional diversity about rights, existing resources in Lanzarote, aid, administrative procedures, support measures for the exercise of legal capacity, among others, with the aim of "improving the autonomy and participation" of people with dependency or functional diversity.
According to the data in this report, 71 cases have been attended throughout the past year. Of these, 102 people have been directly assisted, 68% being women and 32% men. The most representative age group is between 50 and 64 years old (48% of the people attended are in this age range). Added to this are people between 30 and 49 years old (18% of those attended) and those over 65 years old (13%). To a lesser extent, they have attended to people between 18 and 29 years old (1%).
The type of demands for which these people have come are related to social and economic benefits (29 of the total), where the interested people sought to "know and process" the degree of disability and recognize the situation of dependency, as well as the benefits and economic aid. Added to this are the demands for residential resources or day centers (15 demands); in addition to training and employment (seven demands) and concern for present and future support (25); those related to heritage and inheritance; as well as information on heritage and inheritance, on how to ensure the future of people in vulnerable situations, information on immigration, easy reading service, etc.
In last year's report, ADEPSI highlights that "the lack of information, advice and close support [...] prevents the exercise of rights" and implies "the decrease in the quality of personal life, family and, ultimately, social."
Likewise, it concludes by pointing out that it is evident "that a part of the population linked to disability seeks in the courts a legal response to what is a social problem" or "find a complement to their reality through the Service."
