According to a survey of 750 people over 60 by the Mémora Foundation, 23.5% of grandparents are with their grandchildren every day – to take them to school and give them lunch or dinner – since the parents of the children work. The study also reveals that 39% of them take care of grandchildren several days a week, 17% do it four days a month and also 17% do so sporadically, reports the Business Circle of Attention to People, CEAPS.
If you think of older people as caregivers, they are an essential member of the family. But when they are the ones who need attention and care: who thinks about them? Who gives them back what they have done? Who thinks about basic issues such as financing the care they require?
“Grandparents and grandmothers have become the largest social service. They are a guarantee of sustainability of the family economy, and the Welfare State has been sustained thanks to its support. But when you have to think about what they need and who can provide the services, nobody stops to think about it, there is no social awareness that they should receive decent treatment for social justice, ”explains Cinta Pascual, president of Ceaps.
12 years ago, the State established the so-called Dependency Law. A base that determined that all older people had established by law access to the Services when necessary and adapted to the degree of dependence of each person. Rights that it collects, and that “intended to leave the charity system to establish, together with Health, Social Services as the Fourth Pillar of the Welfare State, but for which there is no real, clear or finalist financing".
From the group it is considered that if 2% of the country's GDP was dedicated to the elderly, it would be possible to approach the dignity they deserve, not only the users, but also the people who work in offering these services: doctors, nurses, gerocultores , cleaners, ATS, wardens, cooks … That is why the entity continues to ask, in its name, financing that has a finalist character, and public prices and rates are updated in relation to real costs.
“From the sector we do not understand how from the institutions, politicians or society the Social Services system is questioned or not taken into account, as it does with the Healthcare system. There is a lack of commitment to the elderly, both with that 80% of grandparents and with the remaining 20% that also needs attention, ”concluded Paschal Tape.