On December 17, 2021, Elisa had no choice but to start a new life, one that she had never imagined. That day she, who is now 53 years old, and her son landed in Madrid. “You just left everything, I had my three jobs, my salary, my house, my car,” he remembers about his daily life in Venezuela, before losing everything and fearing for the health of his son, who is 29 years old and has a recognized disability of 77%. “I had to secure the medication that prevents him from having seizures.” She left everything behind and found herself homeless, because they couldn't stay at her sister's house, as she initially thought. “I had to start from scratch, and getting a flat here on your own is not easy, you hit a wall.” She exudes optimism as she tells a story that would weigh heavily on many. She now has a job and can afford a room in a shared home. But it was not always like this.
“I arrived at a Samur Social shelter,” he says about his beginnings in Spain, after his sister's landlady did not allow them to stay in the house. They spent a year and a half there. Her social worker referred her in 2022 to Hogar Sí, an entity that combats homelessness, and she entered a pilot project. This is a program financed with funds from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan of the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, with an investment of 2.9 million euros. It lasted almost two years in which she gathered scientific evidence on personalized job search itineraries for homeless people. The results, presented this Monday, confirm that through less standardized attention and not focused solely on employment, but also on aspects such as housing or even personal image, three times as many people achieve an autonomous exit – a job and leave the program by their own decision, with an independent life project—compared to the traditional search model.
Elisa has two other children, in addition to Alejandro, and four grandchildren. Before coming to Spain, she passed through Bogotá, where she stayed with a daughter. But Alejandro's medical situation was still not covered. “I have Spanish nationality (his father was Spanish), so I went to the consulate. “They put me on a humanitarian flight.” Once here, she found a foundation that her son could go to so she could look for work. “I began to face my fears, to walk further, to get lost.” She asked for the minimum vital income. “I have a degree in Information Sciences and in my country I worked in a public state office as a financial analyst.” Shortly after she adds that she now works in cleaning. “In what I paid to have them done to me,” she says, laughing, taking the edge off. Compared to their beginnings, they are much better now.
In Spain there are about 37,000 homeless people, according to Hogar Sí estimates. It does not mean that all of them are homeless, but that they cannot afford housing, many live in shelters. According to INE data from 2022, 47% are looking for a job. So Hogar Sí has led a project in which 344 people who lived on the streets or in shelters participated, and which had two groups: a control group, which followed a traditional job search methodology, and another experimental, with support. more personalized. Both were selected randomly.
“In the traditional itineraries that exist (for people in exclusion), the center is the job offers, based on them it is seen who may have a fit. Here people's vocation matters: what they want to do. And we start looking for a job, we see if they require training. There are also personnel who seek alliances with companies,” explains the general director of Hogar Sí, José Manuel Caballol. “And there is a third area: the support that people need while they make the effort to look for work. In traditional processes, they are usually limited to transportation, so that the person can attend the interview and little else. Here the first thing they need is a home, we offer support so that they can carry out their process, also in the field of specific training, in personal image and in connectivity. “Who can hope to look for work without an internet connection?”
Through the pilot project, Elisa has been helped to improve her CV, to enter the insertion company linked to the foundation, they have advised her on the recognition of her degree, still in process, and to access other jobs, such as the one that starts now. In the future, she wants to work in administration. For the moment, she continues to receive the minimum vital income, which complements her salary. This way she can cover the expenses of the house that she and her son share with five other people in the Madrid town of Alcalá de Henares. “We have a room for the two of us. He in his bed and I in mine. We still don't have that privacy of him having his room apart from him,” she explains.
Her first job was putting up posters in a Hogar Sí job placement company. Then she started working as a cleaning substitute in another job placement company, and continued to chain contracts. In April 2022 she managed to rent a room. “I felt like I needed to give the opportunity to someone else. “I told the social worker that my bed (at the Samur Social) was already asking for new guests.” The road has not been easy. At the beginning of March she lost her job. But this Sunday he started working again, with a one-year contract. “(In the pilot project) they gave me the opportunity to work and I am deeply grateful. That helped me get out,” she says. “Right now my mental health is fine. I don't wake up with that worry like when I was in the Samur. I have to make the most of that year of work to plan and improve my situation.”
In a traditional employment itinerary there is one professional for every 40 or 45 people. In this project, one technician for every 25. According to the data presented, 38 people achieved autonomous exit, compared to 13 in the control group. “The numbers may seem small, they are 22% (of the participants in the experimental group, made up of 154 people). But we are talking about solving an extremely serious situation,” insists Caballol. At the end of the program, 72% of the members of the experimental group had left the street or shelter situation, compared to 50% of the control group. The labor incorporation rate is 61%, compared to 47%. “By generating support, results are not only achieved, but they are maintained. And the program is efficient: it is more expensive by 1,500 euros per person, but the investment is recovered in less than a year, via Social Security contributions and benefits that they no longer receive,” adds Caballol. In the presentation this Monday, Mónica Martínez Bravo, the general secretary of Inclusion of the ministry led by Elma Saiz, described the results as “spectacular.”
Elisa is now preparing to “divorce” the program. “We divide the goods and each one of us on her side,” she laughs again. It is a happy separation: social intervention is over. Gone was the adaptation to the country, “with those colds that do not exist in Venezuela”, to another way of speaking, to the pilgrimage through NGOs, through social wardrobes. “I feel good because the process gives you independence, security. I am one of those who say: I achieved it and I will continue don't slow down. “It hasn’t been easy, but it hasn’t been impossible either.”
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