Jose Manuel Castuera, a resident of Xinzo de Limia (Ourense), has been waiting for a year for the regional administration to recognize his disability, after his left leg had to be amputated in February of last year. “I submitted the application for the disability assessment in March of last year and I am still waiting,” he explains. This is a widespread problem in Galicia, where cases accumulate and there are urgent requests that six months after their registration have not yet been assessed, and in standard priority cases such as that of Juan Manuel in which waiting periods can reach to exceed the year after the affected party submitted their request for evaluation.
And there are two different cases when it comes to assessing a disability in the community, depending on the priority of each case. Applications become urgent when any of the following characteristics occur: access to employment and regulated education where places are reserved for people with disabilities, if the person is under 18 years of age or over 90, when the person affected its assessment of the degree of disability has expired, if there is an open judicial or administrative procedure related to gender violence, which may be affected by the recognition and qualification of the degree of disability or if there is a request for aid subject to deadlines or The affected person has a non-contributory pension or dependent child benefit.
In all these cases, the law establishes a period of three months for the responsible Administration to assess and resolve the request for assessment of the degree of disability, also counting on priority. The rest of the procedures will be attended to in order of entry. The autonomous body also points out that there is the possibility of extending this deadline by the Territorial Headquarters if the number of requests made or due to other circumstances determine that the expected deadline cannot reasonably be met.
The Ministry of Social Policy does not provide data on the number of files on the waiting list to be evaluated, nor the average time from the entry of the application in the registry until the resolution of the file. However, the Valedora do Pobo throughout 2022 has issued successive recommendations to the regional department to “enable the announced measures (reinforcement of technical personnel in the assessment procedure) and the others that are considered necessary to correct the delays in the disability assessments, which harm affected people by delaying access to eventual benefits; and that it be resolved on the assessment of the person affected in this case, since it is delayed, in accordance with the established deadline.”
Over the past year, a total of 71 complaints regarding a problem that has been around for a long time came to the high commissioner of the Parliament of Galicia for the defense of rights and freedoms. In May of last year, the Galician Confederation of People with Disabilities (Cogami) already launched a campaign called #EsperayDesespera with which they denounced that not receiving an assessment or review of the degree of disability in time harms people with disabilities in employment, education, accessibility, health and also makes it impossible for those affected to access benefits that help compensate for the inequality of opportunities that a disability entails.
Legislative changes starting April 20 and a six-month period
As Cogami points out, the regulations that regulate these procedures will change as of April 20, with the entry into force of Royal Decree 888/2022 and which does establish a maximum resolution period of 6 months from the date. of submission of the application for all cases regardless of their priority.
All those applications that were submitted before the entry into force of the new scale, and on the day of entry into force (04/20/2023) have not yet been evaluated, the new scale will have to be applied.
Although the association maintains its reluctance since the autonomous Administration will have to regulate the development of the new Royal Decree in the Galician area. And that is where “we will have to see,” they point out from Cogami.
The difficulties of being an unrecognized disabled person
Juan Manuel Castuera Blanco, a resident of Xinzo de Limia (Ourense), had his life change in February of last year. The doctors detected a bacteria that was swarming in his left leg, accompanied by a thrombosis that made it difficult for his heart to transport blood below his knees. Doctors performed a bypass below his left kneecap in the hope that this measure would be enough to improve circulation in the area.
Unfortunately, this was not the case, and the risk of the area becoming entangled was very high, so the doctors decided that the best solution was to amputate. Juan Manuel, upon receiving the news, asked for a week to talk to his family and think about what that operation was going to bring him.
However, the support of her daughters and the quiet consultation made her see that there was no reason to wait any longer. That same morning of February 16, he showed up at the Ourense University Hospital Complex and told the doctor “cut what you have to cut.”
Going through this experience is already a hard enough process, but the adversities did not end for Juan Manuel at that time, since despite submitting the request for a disability assessment a month later, through Xinzo’s social worker, a Year later, his disability remains unrecognized.
A situation to which we must add that five months after the surgical intervention he had still not been able to start his rehabilitation sessions, “so I filed a complaint and the next day they called me to start them.”
When evaluating the difficulties caused by not yet having disability recognition, after a year, Juan Manuel explains that “in May the personal income tax return arrives and I will not be able to access the deductions that correspond to me.” It is not the only problem since he cannot access a prosthesis, nor request a parking license from his town hall that would allow him to park his car in spaces designated for people with this type of ailment. A reason that makes it difficult for Juan Manuel to even go out to accompany his wife and his daughters when they go out for a walk.
The reinforcement of personnel led to an increase in valuations in 2021
Social Policy does not clarify the number of professionals that the EVO has, nor if its reinforcement was maintained in 2022 and until today
In Galicia, the Ministry has seven assessment and orientation teams (EVO), made up of medical personnel, psychologists and social workers. who are responsible for qualifying the disability as well as offering guidance for habilitation, rehabilitation and measures aimed at helping to improve the lives of people with disabilities. Each of the teams is located in one of the seven cities of the community.
Throughout 2021, between them they carried out 31,565 disability assessments in Galicia. 23% more than the previous year, but still without reaching the figures of 2019, when these teams assessed more than 35,000 people during that year.
The increase in the activity of these teams was marked in 2021 by the reinforcement of personnel carried out by Social Policy and co-financed by community institutions. Of the 31,565 assessments, 22,628 were carried out by the regular staff of the EVO teams, 71.68%. While 8,937 of the evaluations of the degree of disability, both in the initial procedure and in the review of the degree, were carried out by the reinforcement personnel.
The Ministry was asked for the writing of this article, also about the number of personnel that the seven Galician EVO teams have, and whether this reinforcement of personnel continues throughout 2022 and until today, without obtaining a response. part of the autonomous department.
Taking into account the place in which the disability evaluations were carried out, Vigo, A Coruña and Pontevedra, in that order, account for more than 58% of all the evaluations carried out in Galicia. Santiago, for its part, is in the penultimate step, with 3,167 evaluations, behind Ferrol and surpassing only Lugo.
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