Orihuela town hall has launched the Mental Illness Care and Monitoring Service (SASEM), which has been joined by two psychologists, a social worker, a social integration technician and a social educator.
The selection of personnel has been carried out by the Department of Human Resources and will be paid with a grant from the Ministry of Equality and Inclusive Policies received by the Social Welfare area.
The service, which is being provided for the first time in Orihuela, aims to serve users who have been diagnosed by the health services with a mental illness and who are of legal age in their own home and through an individualised plan that allows them to be autonomous and improve their social integration.
In addition, the user service team will also work with their families to offer them tools that allow them to attend and interact better with their relatives diagnosed with mental illness.
The Mayor of Orihuela, Carolina Gracia, has detailed that the service will start operating next week and has considered that “this is a fundamental and necessary service”. In addition, she has recalled that the Ministry of Equality and Inclusive Policies granted subsidies to start up the service in the last two years, although the contributions had to be returned. “This year we are going to have to return part of that subsidy, as we already said, but we have done the important thing is to hire the necessary figures, psychologists and specialists, so that next year the service is fully operational for Orihuela”, she added.
Councillor for Human Resources, Luisa Boné, has stated that the hiring of the necessary personnel for the start-up of the service “has been possible to carry out thanks to the previous work of the council, which has consisted of the creation of job banks for social educators and social integration technicians”.
