April 15th 2021 Spain
A new inclusion programme to help young girls who abandoned their studies due to motherhood find a job will be put in place thanks to the new European Funds
The head of Family Affairs and Equal Opportunities, Isabel Blanco, presented this morning, the 15th of April, in Valladolid the Strategic Action Programme for Roma people, a document that defines the public policies that the Council will promote for this group, until 2030.
This programme, which divides its 73 measures into six areas, has the ultimate goal of protecting and improving the quality of life of those most vulnerable and promoting their social and labour inclusion. The estimated budget for its application amounts to 40 million euros in its ten years of validity.
Isabel Blanco considered the project ‘Pajarillos Educa’ as a model for social cohesion and has opted for extending its example to other environments applying the same public policies, combining actions in the social, educational, and employment areas. It is a reflection of the results that are intended to be achieved with the strategy presented today.
Its construction is based on a situation analysis done on the latest available official studies. Hence, it is inferred that the Roma population in Castilla y León rounds 26,500 people (3.5% of the total Roma population in Spain); which is eminently urban (more than half of them live in provincial capitals) and mostly young (around a third are under 16 years of age).
From a socioeconomic perspective, 92% of Roma people are at risk of poverty, despite the fact that 19% are incorporated into the labour market. 46% of Roma households live in extreme poverty, while the child poverty rate is 89%, almost three times higher than that of the general population.
In addition, according to a report from the Foundation for the Promotion of Social Studies and Applied Sociology, almost three out of every four Roma people living in Spain were in a situation of social exclusion, 54% of them in severe exclusion. This last percentage is five times higher than that of the rest of society (9.5%).
Five principles inspire the program presented. The first principle is to guarantee the development of their fundamental rights in accessing public services and resources and to normalize their care, eliminating prejudices and stereotypes; the second one is to ensure coordinated action and the involvement of public powers and the associative movement of this group in all actions; the third one is to combine general policies for inclusion with other measures to address the specific disadvantages that may affect the Roma population; the fourth one is to harmonize the intervention of the administrations, under the leadership of Social Services Management, and finally, the fifth one is to promote equality and the development of Roma women, who face double discrimination.
This is how the strategic document addresses the implementation of policies aimed at the Roma community from a modern perspective, according to the current socio-economic situation, and trying to consolidate a more inclusive and equal society for the future.
1st Area: Social Services
The plan is structured in six areas or lines of action. The first one, with eight measures, focuses on Social Services, where a comprehensive and proactive intervention is proposed in two phases: a first of exhaustive assessment of the person's needs and a second of definition, together with its recipient, of individualized support plan, with social support if necessary.
It is intended to avoid the reproduction of the generational pattern of poverty, supporting family and community intervention methodologies to prevent marginalization, and promoting socio-educational inclusion and the improvement of the quality of life of minors from families in situations of social exclusion.
Similarly, hand in hand with the Third Social Sector, high-intensity socio-labour insertion itineraries will be carried out with recipients of the Minimum Guaranteed Income or the Subsistence Income to promote their employability, and intercultural mediation actions will also be carried out in fundamental areas of development of the Roma community through training. Diversity management training actions will also be developed in different areas: labour, education, security, the media, etc.
2nd Area: Education
In the second section, of Education, 23 measures are collected to increase the schooling of the Roma population under six years of age; reduce school absenteeism in Primary education and lower failure and dropout rates in Secondary education; improve the transition to post-compulsory studies, and promote diversity and inclusion in education. In order to achieve these aims, the implementation of school monitoring and mediation measures are proposed, especially in cases of abandonment of Roma girls; the execution of the Programa de Refuerzo, Orientación y Apoyo – a reinforcement, orientation and support program– with initiatives to support students and their families; the improvement of the offer volume and accessibility to Basic Vocational Training; promoting Roma students' access to middle and higher educational levels, especially women, or training during life through individualized itineraries, among others.
In this educational field, the Family Affairs and Equal Opportunities Office will launch a specific program of labour inclusion with girls and teenagers of gypsy ethnicity who had to leave the classrooms due to their motherhood. They will be offered training itineraries that will allow them to expand their skills and access the labour market in order to develop their own autonomous life project in the future. This social integration initiative is one of the projects that will be financed with the new European funds of The Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan of the European Union.
Likewise, and aiming to combat school absenteeism among Roma population, the department led by Isabel Blanco will review the criteria for granting the Guaranteed Minimum Income, so that in order to receive this resource it will be essential that families commit to the schooling of their children.
These measures have been designed taking into account a social reality that indicates that the school failure rate in Spain among Roma students between 16 and 24 years of age is 64% –in comparison to 13% of the totality– or that only 17% of Roma students complete high school (15.5% if they are female teenagers), while in terms of the general population this percentage rises to 80% (95% in the case of girls).
Precisely, to respond to this situation happening in Castilla y León, the II Plan of Attention to Diversity in Education 2017-2022 is in force –which establishes among its strategic lines the need to achieve an inclusive quality education for all students– and the 2030 Program –to reinforce equity in the education system, progress in inclusive education and combat school segregation for socio-educational vulnerability reasons
3rd Area: Employment
The third block of the action plan aimed at the Roma population seeks, through 12 measures, to strengthen their employability via qualification, improve the conditions of the employed and promote equal opportunities and the fight against discrimination in the labour market.
To do this, work will be done on preparing those who did not finish their primary studies so that they can pass the key competences tests, or on promoting their access to reinforced Youth Guarantee programs. In this task, the Instituto de la Juventud of Castilla y León, dependent on the Consejería de Familia e Igualdad de Oportunidades, will play an essential role, which will develop information and distribution campaigns to encourage the access of the Roma population to the European reinforced Youth Guarantee.
Other measures will be promoting training to encourage the implementation of self-employment projects –with advice on legal and tax requirements– or the professionalization of the existing ones –to increase the viability of their economic activity–, and combat the informal economy.
As it happens in the entire strategy, these measures have been designed after analysing the employment situation of the group based on different studies. From these, it is concluded that the Roma population has a high activity rate in the country as a whole –essentially self-employed–, although its most characteristic features are precarious under-occupation and precarious underemployment. The presence of the Roma community in the most regulated sectors and with better conditions is scarce.
4th Area: Housing
The fourth priority incorporates eight measures to reduce spatial segregation and poor housing and eradicate slams; improve the quality of accommodation for the Roma population, and support the residential transition processes and the coexistence of Roma families residing in standardized housing.
The initiatives proposed in this area go through the development of comprehensive programs for re-housing and social inclusion of people living in shanty towns or slums, which include multidisciplinary approaches to social action, health, education and employment; for facilitating standardized housing and working to promote inclusion in the community; and for enabling economic support measures for families with low-income.
The Junta de Castilla y León has already been working on this type of measure, so that the percentage of houses classified as substandard housing has fallen from 11.54% in 2007 to 8.41% at the present time. In 2019, the Consejerías de Fomento y Medio Ambiente y de Familia e Igualdad de Oportunidades y la Federación Regional de Municipios y Provincias (FRMP) signed a collaboration protocol for the eradication of shanty towns. And in the time being, work is being done on the elimination of the existing ones in Venta de Baños (Palencia) and Burgos.
5th Area: Health
In this fifth area of health, the Roma population presents worse results in a variety of indicators when comparing them both with those of social groups in a better socioeconomic situation, as well as with those in a worse situation, with existing differences in health status, lifestyles and access to some services.
The 13 measures included in this section are consistent with those established in the so-called 'Declaration of Oviedo', arising from a forum promoted in 2019 in Asturias by the Spanish Health, Consumption and Social Welfare, in which interventions to promote health and social welfare in the Roma population were determined.
Among the most outstanding initiatives are to strengthen the training of health and social care professionals to approach the health of the Roma population; spread the cervical cancer prevention and detection program among women; carry out awareness campaigns to address chronic pathologies, disability and mental illness, and promote the responsible use of health resources by the Roma population, especially hospital and emergency services.
6th Area: Participation and equal treatment
Castilla y León is in line with the Council of Europe Recommendation of the 12th of March 2021 about equality, inclusion and participation of the Roma population, which proposes an impulse for policies that manage to break the enormous inequality gap suffered by the Roma population throughout the continent. This way, in the program of strategic actions presented today, the Council opt for increasing the participation of the Roma population in society, promoting equal treatment and preventing discrimination with nine measures
In the document, the autonomous government commits to support activities aimed at increasing social knowledge of the gypsy culture; involve associations made up of Roma people in the design and development of policies that promote participation in society, and develop awareness-raising actions that make it possible to make the positive changes in the social inclusion of Roma people to promote social cohesion visibility.
The challenge is to promote the participation of the Roma population in associations and organizations of all fields and change the social image of the Roma community, for which it is essential to transmit satisfactory experiences in the work, educational and social fields.
Funding for the execution of the program
Funding for the implementation of the measures included in this program amounts to four million euros per year from the different participating ministries. Also, it must be taken into account that this forecast with autonomous funds can be extended with that from the European funds of the Recovery and Resilience Facility of the Next Generation EU Fund and the Operational Programmes of Castilla y León of the next programming period 2021-2027.
Very participative document
The action plan presented today is the result of a broad participatory process, in which up to five departments of the autonomous government have been involved –Family and Equal Opportunities, Employment and Industry, Development and Environment, Health and Education–, the most representative entities of the Roma ethnic group and the Third Social Sector, professional associations and local entities.
These groups will be present in the working group that will be set up within the framework of this document to promote and evaluate the implementation of the measures through 16 indicators.