ABC rewards mental health care for ‘different’ children

Due to its innovative nature and its necessity, the jury of the 20th edition of the ABC Solidario awards has awarded it first prize in the category of best solidarity project.

Its initiative has a medical service for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of mental health for children and adolescents with neurological disorders that pivots on three axes: the educational project of Celia and Pepe School, with neurocognitive evaluations and emotional therapy sessions; a cabinet that helps families manage their children’s mental health and a leisure space so that children can interact outside the usual environment under the supervision of occupational therapists.

The 30,000 euros of the prize will be used to support this project that began last September and has a team made up of neurologists, psychologists, neuropsychologists and psychiatrists. “Their job is not only to care for children but also for their own families who do not know how to deal with these problems,” explains Pilar García de la Granja, president of the Querer Foundation.

Specialized care

García de la Granja has been fighting for years so that children with rare developmental diseases that affect language or memory, such as some included in the umbrella known as autism spectrum disorders, have the best diagnosis and specialized educational and health care.

Their first project was Celia and Pepe’s school, an educational center that was born to serve children who were left in no man’s land. Children who did not fit in a special education center or a regular school, “but who need very specialized attention and a very clear methodology for them to progress. And that is our success,” says García de la Granja, who is exporting the educational method of the Querer Foundation with training courses in other centers and with other teachers so that more children in Spain benefit. “Teaching a normal child is very easy, teaching these children is very complicated and you need very vocational professionals with an open mind who accept that disability cannot be an excuse for children not to progress.”

Livestock as a lifesaver

The second prize recognizes a very different work. The chosen project is called “Livestock” and was developed in one of the most conflictive points in Central America: the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. There the Proclade Foundation, promoted by the Claretian Missionaries, develops cooperation projects such as the one that has just obtained recognition from ABC. The award-winning initiative is aimed at providing 300 families in the Enriquillo area with a goat.

To that place, a mountainous and unpopulated area, thousands of displaced people began to arrive a little over a decade ago, fleeing the destruction caused by catastrophes such as the 2010 earthquake or the repeated hurricanes and, especially in recent years, the extreme violence that the gangs have implemented in the country’s capital. “It is a mountainous pass with very bad conditions but here, even if they live poorly, they can survive with improvised agriculture,” Francisco Carril, director of the Proclade Foundation, tells us.

In this context, the simple possession of a goat “allows them to improve their life support and, in the medium term, changes their lives,” explains Carril. First because “it improves their health because it provides them with new foods that enrich their meager diet with meat and milk.” And secondly, because it is a community project, which allows them medium-term economic development with the creation of small livestock, in addition to a multiplier effect by collaborating, with the donation of some of the offspring, with other families in their same areas. circumstances.

In addition to the 300 goats needed, there are also 9 male goats for reproduction and, through local technicians, at least one member of the families must participate in a training course on livestock and agriculture.

Another of the fundamental contributions of this project, which is locally coordinated by the Claretian Missionaries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, is the development of women, so the goal is to ensure that they are at least 50% of the beneficiaries, “an important figure in a way of life as masculinized as livestock farming,” explains the director of Proclade.

“Many young girls come to the place, single mothers without resources who often find themselves forced, to support their children, into marriages of convenience with elderly people in which they suffer abuse and violence,” says Francisco Carril. With this project “we want to give them a way to earn a living, which will help them not have to fall into those types of marriages that they do not want,” he adds.

A central kitchen

The hunger queues and the soup kitchens overwhelmed by the effects of the pandemic led the NGO International Cooperation to look for answers that would cover the needs of so many people. In collaboration with the Palacio Vistalegre – which provided the facilities – and the Fuenllana hospitality school – which provided the technical part – the “Vistalegre Social Kitchen” project started in March 2021.

Its objective, “to create a central kitchen that prepares menus daily to cover the soup kitchens that are overflowing,” as Iciar Lumbreras, corporate development director of the NGO, explains to ABC. A kitchen equipped with donations from several companies, managed entirely by young volunteers and that prepares its menus thanks to food donated by Mercadona and KFC. Now, the ABC Solidario endowment “will allow us to buy more necessary ingredients, renew some of the equipment and reinforce the training of volunteers,” explains Lumbreras.

It is rare that a Queen presides over every notable event of a rare disease federation. It is strange that a person has a disease for which there is usually no diagnosis or treatment. Nor does it help families. It is unusual for an aid organization to celebrate its big day on February 29. Queer. It is unusual that an entity that supports 7% of the population, or three million people in this country, receives an award. So the joy of Feder’s president could not be unusual either.

Juan Carrion conceives the award given by the jury of the ABC Solidario awards and which accredits them as the solidarity entity of the year as a stimulus to “continue improving the quality of life of our group”, which – after 25 years of history – has gone from 7 to 418 united patient organizations. They represent more than 1,200 pathologies.

The award will serve to “contribute directly to our action for people, associations and society. But it also helps us position our cause on the public agenda.” And those minutes of attention are vital for each patient. Every exciting speech that the Queen makes at her events manages to monopolize those flashes for an instant and direct them to inexplicable pathologies that only affect a handful of people.

There are 6,313 identified in Europe, which means that so many ‘few’ make a ‘many’. It is estimated that 300 million people in the world live with these ailments, the prevalence of which is below five patients per 10,000 inhabitants. In most cases, children, who with their families wait six years for a diagnosis. Knowing what happens to them, something so basic. Two in ten wait more than a decade to have even a glimmer of hope.

With the aim of giving a break to family members in charge of caring for the elderly or people with functional diversity, the project was born. Family Respite of the University of Seville. This idea emerged in 2008 and since then it has been expanded and improved, the basis is the reconciliation with work, educational and family life.

«This project seeks to support the university community, students, teachers or workers of the center, caregivers of a dependent person. The purpose is that, with the help of student volunteers, family members can have a free hour that they can dedicate to work, leisure, training or the procedures they need,” explains Ana López, vice-rector of Social Services, Healthy Campus, Equality and Cooperation of the University of Seville.

The volunteers themselves, students with specific training in dependency, go to the place where they are needed. There, with activities programmed by a psychologist, the students accompany the dependent person, either in their homes or outdoors. «We also organize activities leisure on weekends week with people with functional diversity, like going to the theater, the cinema or the beach,” says López.

This award represents great support for the project and an important emotional reinforcement for the members of Respiro Familiar, “we value the recognition offered to both the university and the generosity of our students», explains the vice-rector.

A prestigious jury

In this edition the following were part of the jury: Ángel Gabilondo. Ombudsman; Ángel Expósito, the director of La Linterna on the Cope network; Juan Manuel Cendoya, vice president of Santander Spain and general director of the Communication, Corporate Marketing and Studies division; Borja Baselga, director of the Santander Foundation; Natalia Peiró, General Secretary of Cáritas Española; Ángel Arias, rector of the Carlos III University of Madrid; Arantxa Echevarría, film director and Julián Quirós, director of ABC.