- The General Director of Disability of the Community of Madrid visits this reference service on the occasion of its 25th anniversary
- Envera serves 33 people with intellectual disabilities and high support needs.
Madrid | January 28, 2025
The Day Center with Residence for people with intellectual disabilities and high support needs Envera 25 years of history accompanying the most vulnerable people on the journey of their lives to occupy their place in the world with dignity. This was witnessed today by Alejandra Serrano, Director General of Care for People with Disabilities of the Community of Madrid, during her visit with the president and founding father of Envera, José Antonio Quintero, and its CEO, Enrique Grande.
Thanks to this service, the entity responds to the needs of 33 adults with a high level of dependency and a disability of more than 75%. Thirteen of them also live 24 hours a day in the specialized Envera Residence, an NGO that was founded 48 years ago by Iberia and which each year cares for 5,000 people with disabilities and their families and provides stable employment for 900 professionals with disabilities.
As the coordinator of the Day Center, Rosa Ollero, explains, the activity in this service "focuses on providing the necessary support for the maintenance and development of the capabilities of the people we serve and to ensure that they have a better quality of life".
Envera's multidisciplinary team of professionals offers the necessary support to beneficiaries, using innovative approaches and methodologies such as active support, closely linked to person-centered planning and positive behavioral support as the main improvement strategies for people with disabilities.
Social integrators and social and health care technicians, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, psychologists, a medical team and a social worker are the second family of the people Envera serves.
"Even though they have multiple support needs that compromise many aspects of their daily lives, they are people who have their tastes, dreams, preferences and particular needs just like each and every one of us. That is why we advocate abandoning a paternalistic and welfarist model of care, which is based on the limitations of the person, to implement a model based on person-centered care, on the relationship that is established between the professional and the beneficiary and that accompanies families in the needs and support they require," Ollero points out.
Over the last quarter of a century, this space specialized in stimulation, care, attention and development of activities has been transformed as the needs of its beneficiaries have also changed.
Precisely, the idea of creating a Day Center in Envera was born, more than 25 years ago, from the need of people with intellectual disabilities and their families. Pilar López, beneficiary of the Association and daughter of an Iberia maintenance technician, was the first person to demand a specialized resource that would offer the necessary support for those who were then called "severely mentally handicapped persons".
Although Pilar did not get to see its implementation, on January 18, 2000, the official opening of the Day Center with Residence took place, to which she herself gave the name of Pililó, becoming a pioneering resource located in the Envera Integral Center for Disability in Colmenar Viejo, which was inaugurated by Ana Botella and which, since then, has become a reference service throughout the Community of Madrid.
Its coordinator tells how "over the 25 years that the Day Center and the Residence have been in operation, the profile of the people we serve has changed significantly. Those who have been with us since the beginning have aged and the new additions have different characteristics.
That is why in 2019 the decision was made to carry out a deep reform of the facilities to adapt the spaces and offer a comfortable place with the necessary supports to the new needs, especially focused on the care of people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but without neglecting the long-lived beneficiaries.
As if it were a premonition, this reform made it possible, with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, to set up a field hospital in the Day Center, which "made it easier for us to isolate the people who were ill and give them better medical care at that difficult time," recalls Ollero.
Another challenge for professionals is to respond to the needs of people who have grown older over the years. Some of the beneficiaries are in a process of aging, although places are also allocated to younger people, generating totally different care objectives and with their own needs and characteristics.
This is the case of José Carlos Zazo, or Pepe as his colleagues call him, who has been at Envera for 25 years and is the oldest member of the Day Center at 67. On the other hand, Lucía Gallego is, at 21, the youngest at the Center.
Currently, the Day Center has a technical team that jointly assesses the cognitive profile and the socio-familial and psychological characteristics of each person.
It also has an occupational and physiotherapy classroom where joint mobilizations are performed to maintain joint range; inhibition of reflex postural patterns in order to normalize movements; orthopedic manual therapy; training in the use of the standing frame; specific neurological therapies; as well as gymnastics and fine motor work.
The workshop classroom serves 13 people with a more autonomous profile and greater communication skills, developing different activities aimed at increasing personal autonomy and encouraging participation in different areas, facilitating motivating, fun and attractive learning.
Given the social demand and the need of the Community of Madrid to attend to people with ASD and high support needs, in 2022 Envera launches the pilot project "Aula TEA" within the Day Center, an adapted space with specifically trained staff.
Alternative and Augmentative Communication Systems (AACS), such as the Benson Schaefer program, pictograms, etc., are used in each classroom, and technologies such as tablets are used to enhance the skills of the beneficiaries.
In addition, other activities such as adapted sports, music therapy and dog-assisted intervention are carried out, as well as outings and excursions outside the center in order to achieve two of the main objectives: integral development and increased social participation.
These daytime activities, which change throughout the months, continue in the afternoons and weekends at the Residence, where they are adapted to the residents' preferences. Handicrafts, theater or yoga are some of the proposals that are carried out in what today has become the home of the thirteen people with great support needs who live in Envera.
For Envera's president, "the 25th anniversary of the Day Center exemplifies Envera's commitment to the most vulnerable, as well as the spirit of those fathers and mothers, Iberia employees, who almost 50 years ago believed that a better world for our children with disabilities was possible. Thanks to the professionals who accompany them in their lives for giving continuity to that dream".
