The Government and the La Caixa Foundation activate a project for the family reception of displaced people | Economy

The Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, José Luis Escrivá, and the President of the La Caixa Foundation, Isidro Fainé, presented this Wednesday the start-up of the Ukrainian Family Reception Project, through which it will organize and will coordinate a network of foster families for those displaced by the armed conflict in that country.

Thus, Spanish families interested in receiving families of Ukrainian refugees can contact the telephone number 900 67 09 09, which will be operational as of this Thursday, March 24, from 09:00 to 22:30 from Monday to Sunday. The La Caixa Foundation thus joins the Reception Plan deployed by the Ministry of Inclusion, and it does so in the phase immediately after the emergency reception that refugees receive upon arrival in the country, of short duration, and which allows for a assessment of the state of the family and diagnosis of their needs.

This first reception is of “short duration, in hostels, shelters or hotels”, as indicated, and, in addition, “allows an assessment of the state of the family and the diagnosis of needs. It will be after this first phase that the foundation will implement a project that will enable it to activate, receive and manage foster care requests from Spanish families received over the phone for a period of between six months and one year.

“The La Caixa Foundation will assess the number of people they can accommodate, the characteristics of the address and the time period in which they can commit to maintaining the reception, among other parameters”, they have explained. In this sense, the entity has indicated that the validated applications will be referred to the ministry itself and will be connected with the reception demands received.

This project will be deployed in four of the provinces that are registering a higher volume of arrivals, which are Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Murcia and Malaga. To this end, Technical Shelter Offices of the La Caixa Foundation will be created (six in Madrid, six in Barcelona, ​​three in Malaga and three in Murcia) to assess the suitability of the foster family and facilitate the connection with the different official territorial host devices. .

The management of these offices will be carried out by different professional teams, specialists in family intervention from the network of social entities of the CaixaProinfancia program, which each year provides support to more than 60,000 children from all over Spain and their families, as explained by the entity. Escrivá has underlined how “fundamental” it is to start up a project like this and has emphasized the responsibilities and obligations involved in hosting refugees. The latter is, as he has pointed out, why the Government must ensure that “the people who are going to be welcomed have support and guidance, as well as legal and psychological assistance, and access to financial aid for accommodation and maintenance”.

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Escrivá has insisted, once again, on the need to contact the Administration to channel all the aid and solidarity of Spanish society with the Ukrainian people to gain “in efficiency and organization”. On the other hand, the La Caixa Foundation will start a parallel information campaign, under the slogan ‘Family needs a family’, with the aim of “mobilizing citizens”.

“The ministry has trusted us to collaborate in one of the most necessary tasks in the face of the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine: the reception of people affected by the war conflict”, Fainé highlighted. “With this project, for which the Foundation is firmly committed, we want to help refugees find the best possible home in Spain, while channeling the solidarity of citizens,” he added.

2.5 million investment

On the other hand, the La Caixa Foundation has explained that it plans to allocate an investment of 2.5 million euros to the start-up and development of the initiative during the next year. As he has indicated, this project with the ministry joins other initiatives that he is already promoting to support the people affected by the conflict in Ukraine from different angles. “This is the case of the contribution of one million euros made to UNHCR to cover the most basic needs of the displaced, especially in those border countries for which the situation represents a greater challenge, such as Poland and Moldova”, he pointed out.

In addition, he has indicated that La Caixa will contribute 1.5 million euros to the work carried out by the Red Cross, with the aim of caring for both internally displaced persons and refugees in three fundamental directions: promoting the social and labor integration of refugees in Spain; facilitate social and health transfers of people in situations of extreme vulnerability; and care for internally displaced persons in the southwestern region of Ukraine and on the border with Romania.