The mayor, Juan José Cánovas, and the councilor for Social Welfare, Javier Baños, together with municipal technicians, have met with the heads of Cáritas in both parishes in order to evaluate the granting of benefits in kind (food, clothing and products). of hygiene) to individuals and families in a situation of economic precariousness aggravated by the crisis of COVID-19.
During the meeting, the process for the delivery of benefits in kind was evaluated, while the difficulties that currently exist for it were exposed, and the criteria for granting them were adjusted.
The meeting was attended by Rafael Hostench and Lucía Vivancos, from the Cáritas de Santiago and Tres Avemarías, and the director of the Municipal Center of Social Services, Gabriel Cabrera.
In this sense, it has been agreed to attend to foreign adults who have been in Spain for less than three months;
and to non-registered people, detecting through the in-depth interview that they are residing in Totana.
For these purposes, cases of adults who live in the same home but do not have a kinship relationship are also considered, considering them individually (independent files);
although apparently this may suppose a certain benefit in the food to be collected, since both Caritas suggest that this prevents some from taking advantage of others.
On the other hand, in the case of cases that have changed their address and are now in the area of ​​action of a different Caritas group than the one that was attended the last time, the referral to the last parish that attended them is maintained.
They are not treated as new files.
At the meeting it was debated that Cáritas Tres Avemarías has the capacity to take on new people and families, but Cáritas Santiago has difficulties incorporating new files, which is why the City Council has implemented a delivery service for benefits in kind for new files generated in the Cáritas Santiago area.
It should not be considered as a different resource from that of both Caritas, but rather as a reinforcement, complementary exclusively to those new files from the Santiago area and provisional, temporary during the beginning of the socio-sanitary crisis that we are experiencing.
Similarly, it was decided that so that there are no differences between the products that are granted from the three entities, the diversity and volume will be similar in order to be able to guarantee the livelihood of families for a month.
As it was assessed, there have been detected cases of sale of products that Cáritas had previously granted to people in need: the recipients of these sales have been mainly immigrants without residence permits who are unaware of the possibility of the free resource of Cáritas and They are afraid of being in public places because of their irregular status.
It was also commented that there are people who are never satisfied with the amount of benefits granted, always want more and are constantly complaining, without evaluating what is being given to them free of charge.
Lastly, it was intended that people who want to make donations to both Caritas, who previously contact them to be able to guide them on their needs at all times.
