Intervention with Ethnic Minorities

Social and school support, job search ... for this group.

The Program of Intervention with Ethnic Minorities has special incidence in the group of gypsy population and is implemented in those municipalities in which this population, in situation of exclusion or established in degrading places, has greater presence.

This program supports and reinforces the municipal social services for the development of socio-educative support actions and compensatory activities. (e.g. social and school support, improvement of health and hygienic habits, job search, etc.) Its objective is to palliate inequalities that this group suffers from due to structural conditions and marginalization, pursuing a purpose of their acceding to the standardized programs of Social Services.

The actions are organized through individual intervention plans designed by social worker in the zone or municipality where affected family lives. These plans integrate appropriate psycho-social and socio-educative personal supports.

The steps to design these interventions are following:

• To approach real situation of gypsy community, its needs and their deficiencies and also its potentialities and characteristic of cultural identity; in order to jointly define proposals for the social incorporation of gypsies and to move from the social exclusion to the real citizenship.
• Collateral approach and complexity of actions coordinating and fully exploiting the existing resources to improve the quality of attention to this community, to stimulate and facilitate the knowledge and standardized use of the set of public systems of social protection.
• Complementary actions or actions of positive discrimination that by fighting the structural causes help to overcome inequality and to facilitate the standardized use of attention systems.
• Participation interventions: to encourage participation in associations, the political and social participation of the Gypsy community in all the processes that might have affect on their development.
• To sensitize public opinion in order to overcome stereotypes and racist attitudes, and to promote the values of respect, solidarity and tolerance.

As a specific reinforcement for these actions there are measures for the eradication of shanty towns and the intervention in degraded places. These measures are based on technical and economic support to the local shanty towns and the sub-standard housing eradication initiatives. By means of collaboration they try to facilitate in the territory:

• Impulse for the officially protected housing in all diverse modalities.
• Promotion of the social housing.
• Aids for renovation, acquisition and rental of a property
• Beginning of a new program of houses of fast construction and easy adaptation to housing needs in order to face immediately the situations of shanty towns and sub-standard housing. This program should contribute to the diversification of measures for accessing to standardized housing and adaptation to local and social circumstances. And it should guarantee measures of family social support throughout the process that will not finish with the access to housing.

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