A year ago, in San Bartolomé, we opened the doors of a project in which we poured all our enthusiasm and expectations, the Family Respite Center.
It was born in March 2024 with a clear objective: to guarantee comprehensive care for our elders and offer caregiving families real support in balancing their personal, work, and family life. Today, on its first anniversary, we celebrate everything we have achieved in this young journey.
Since its opening, the Center has served 187 people, 43 files have been opened, and the average daily stay has reached 242 days. These figures materialize the great need that we have just covered in our municipality regarding groups that really require real support, a conscious and grounded commitment from this City Council to dignify the care of the elderly, promoting their active aging through specific activities and providing, at the same time, a necessary respite for their caregivers.
A first birthday is always a great celebration. It is the joy of knowing that the most critical period of the start-up, of new beginnings, has been overcome. The San Bartolomé Family Respite Center, in Lanzarote, is, without a doubt, one of the most ambitious projects in the municipality, through which we have taken a giant step in the defense of a sustainable social care system, guaranteeing the company and professional care to the beneficiaries of the service, as well as time for their families so that they can maintain their personal, work, and social activities.
The Family Respite Center is aimed at people with functional limitations, cognitive impairment, reduced mobility, or who partially depend on third parties for their daily life, an important task that has been coordinated by the Elderly Area of the San Bartolomé City Council and in which, thanks to the flexibility of the services of this space, its schedule, and the attention of a multidisciplinary team made up of psychology, social work, and occupational therapy personnel, the Center has not only fulfilled its care function, but has become a benchmark for our municipality in social welfare policies.
Today, we can proudly say that the San Bartolomé Family Respite Center is much more than a care resource. It has become a place for coexistence, the joy of celebrating birthdays and doing so with quality of life, a public service environment, dignified and full of opportunities.
I firmly believe in strengthening this type of service, in the role that, as human beings, we develop throughout life. Taking care of people.
