The Castalla City Council grants more emergency individual aid in the first quarter than in all of 2019
The Castalla City Council has invested 103,327.33 euros in Social Services during the first three months of the year. This amount has been allocated to social emergency aid to tackle the vulnerability situations created by the Coronavirus crisis (Covid-19). The amount, which is very close to the 121,198.34 euros that were invested throughout all of 2019, is a sample of the effort that the Castellón City Council is making during the current pandemic.
Another area of action that has seen a considerable increase in its activity has been that of individual aid as a matter of urgency. The staff of the Department of Social Welfare has attended more files of this type during the month of April than in all of 2019: 34 and 21 procedures, respectively, for an amount of 27,257.68 euros. The health, economic and social crisis caused by Covid-19 has increased the vulnerability of many families, forcing institutions to act so as not to leave anyone behind. The councilor for Social Services, Maite Gimeno, has declared that “for the City Council it is a priority to guarantee decent living conditions for the residents of our town.”
During the first three months of the year, the corporation’s social department has also acted in 24 home help services, 31 dependency aid files and 12 for Valencian inclusion income. In this sense, Gimeno explains that “we have notified the Conselleria of 51 dossiers of the Valencian inclusion income, and the Generalitat has already awarded the collection to more than half of these dossiers. The rest of the files will be resolved within a month ”. In addition, the mayor continues, “we have liquidated the waiting list in the Unit, which came from the year 2017 and 2018, and we are doing the processing to be able to assess the files 2019 and 2020”. Currently about 40 files are pending evaluation.
In addition to the dining voucher granted by the Ministry of Education, the City Council is processing through the Generalitat aid for infant feeding for children from 0 to 17 years old for an amount of 2,447 euros.
The Social Services staff has been able to attend to this greater number of unforeseen cases thanks to the increase in the number of workers, since the Consistory has hired one more person for home help and a social worker. The investment of the Social Services budget, expanded to more than 130,000 euros, is completed with the purchase of material for services to the cemetery, works of the works brigade.
