The Councilor for Social Welfare and Inclusion of the Cabildo de Lanzarote, Marciano Acuña, has offered this Tuesday morning a press conference to clarify the situation regarding the island-owned centers for the elderly and dependent people after the public complaint of the PSOE and of the union Workers' Commissions. During the press conference, Acuña appeared alongside the official from the Unit for Monitoring and Supervision of centers and services attached to the Area, Daisy Villalba.
Marciano Acuña has sent a message of tranquility to the population and has assured that "the care for the elderly is not in question and is an absolute priority" for the Cabildo de Lanzarote. In this way, he has responded to the accusations that warned this past Wednesday of the structural problems in the Socio-health Center of Tías, managed by the company Amavir, where the opposition denounced lack of qualified personnel, lack of medical personnel and shortage of material, among others.
Acuña has branded as “irresponsible and alarmist” the statements made by the PSOE regarding the situation of the Tías senior center. Furthermore, from the first island institution they have insisted that "they come from a political organization that had direct responsibilities in the management of the island socio-health network for years".
Acuña has stressed that the deficiencies detected in the service "are not new, but have been dragging on for years, without sufficient measures being adopted during the previous mandate to correct them. “It is worth remembering that in January 2022 the managing company formally requested to improve the contract to introduce adjustments linked to the typology and degree of dependency of the users. That request was never answered by the previous governing group,” Acuña assured.
“The Cabildo of Lanzarote does not look the other way. The situation of our elderly people in all the socio-health centers dependent on the Institution, a wide network that is a benchmark in the Canary Islands and that requires constant and rigorous supervision, occupies and concerns us,” the counselor detailed.
The PSOE eliminated the Supervision Unit
Likewise, the island head of Social Welfare has defended that one of the first decisions adopted by the current governing group at the beginning of the mandate in 2023 was to recover the Supervision Unit of socio-health centers, a technical body that had been eliminated during the previous stage.
“Today there is a unit that oversees the fulfillment of contracts, that collects complaints and claims from families and that draws up reports of any incident in the service. We have permanent technical documentation and monitoring. However, the PSOE cannot ask for the same regarding the years between 2019 and 2023, because during that period that supervision unit did not exist,” Acuña assured.
From the Cabildo they have also defended "the institutional support" for all workers of the socio-health centers of Lanzarote and La Graciosa, who perform their work in a context of "high care demand". "The socio-health system is experiencing a complex reality throughout Spain. There is a shortage of professionals and, despite this, workers make a constant extra effort that deserves recognition and institutional support," he added.
Likewise, the counselor has regretted the tone used by the PSOE in its public statements. "The panorama that the PSOE describes is so apocalyptic that, if they really considered that a situation of such gravity is occurring, they would already be taking too long to transfer those complaints to the corresponding instances. As public officials, their obligation would be to act with technical rigor and not generate uncertainty among families," he stated.
He/She/It has also criticized that “it is surprising that the PSOE now demonizes outsourcing and demands public management when, during its time in government, it precisely proposed outsourcing the island network of centers. This government group, on the other hand, reached a historic agreement through the Social Concert model that guarantees stability and quality in care,” he/she/it added.
Acuña has also blamed the opposition for the paralysis of the Tahíche elderly residence project or the outsourcing of the Las Cabreras center.
A meeting with representatives of Amavir
Beyond the political debate, the president of the Cabildo de Lanzarote, Oswaldo Betancort, has wanted to focus on the work that is already being carried out to improve the functioning of the Tías Socio-health Center. “Last week we held a meeting with center workers because we know that certain historical deficiencies have not been corrected. Furthermore, also last week we requested a meeting with the national management of the Amavir company, which will be held this Friday in Lanzarote,” he indicated.
The objective of that meeting is to analyze in depth the situation of the center and agree on measures that allow improving the quality of the service. “We hope that concrete solutions emerge from that meeting. Otherwise, the Cabildo will evaluate the adoption of other measures in the corresponding instances to guarantee that the contract is fulfilled in all its terms,” Betancort affirmed, who wanted to convey a message of tranquility to the families of the more than one hundred users of the center.
“This Cabildo is working responsibly. We know that there are aspects that can be improved and we are acting to resolve them. Each case is followed up individually by the Social Welfare and Inclusion Area and any doubts or requests from family members must be channeled through the Institution's own services, avoiding generating unnecessary uncertainty,” Betancort stated.
Finally, during the press conference, official Daisy Villalba has pointed out that in the socio-health center of Tías “there are no situations of abandonment in any case” of the users. "And she appealed to work and responsibility to improve any deficiencies that may arise in this type of sensitive services; services that, on the other hand, are regularly audited by the island teams", the first institution stated in a communiqué.