Back to the territory and community work

The 6^th Congrés del Tercer Sector Social  [Third Social Sector Congress] was held between the 20 and 22 of November 2018, at the Farga of l’Hospitalet de Llobregat Exhibition Centre. This year’s slogan was Social Inequalities, Local Solutions, with the aim of publicising the work of social organisations by focusing on their interaction with local government and the importance of strengthening their efforts on a daily basis as a means of achieving a fairer society.

Of the many activities which took place, let’s examine the debate entitled Making the Individual the Centre of Attention. A Look at Integrated and Community-based Healthcare models, led by Fernando Fantova -a social consultant-, Montserrat Falguera -President of FEATE– and Pau Batlle -Head of Dipsalut’s Department of Policies and Health Promotion-. The topic of patient-centred healthcare was addressed based on the experiences of the three speakers, who spoke of the need to rethink the concept in all its dimensions and depth. In other words, to look beyond any technical issues.

Fantova spoke of the fact that, “the concept of social welfare is seen from a highly patriarchal perspective” adding that, “the third sector has failed to pay attention to the need for innovation while instead defending its niche”. Meanwhile, Batlle spoke of the ideal process for a social entity to employ when planning their projects. The first step must be to understand the specific needs of the people and collectives at whom the actions are directed; Secondly identify the bodies and institutions which are competent to meet these needs; and finally to determine the resources needed to carry out the projects.

In this way, the speakers proposed an exhaustive analysis in order to understand the crossroads at which social organizations currently find themselves: to stand up to the conceptual bunker with speeches on added value -which inevitably lead to ostracism without creating genuine social improvement- or re-evaluate our approach in order to recover the original values that inspired the sector. A return to the territory and the community, to the universality of community work and solidarity. Thus, Fantova concluded that we must focus on integrating the wide range of services available in the community, “we now have many services but there is no community”, therefore we need to develop a comprehensive community service.