Spain – Dependency law
| Criteria | Description | |
| Description of the measure | Measure | Dependency law |
| Country | Spain | |
| Managing Authority | Autonomous communities | |
| Legal Basis | Law 39/2006 for the Promotion of Personal Autonomy and Care for People in a Situation of Dependency (Promoción de la Autonomía Personal y Atención a las Personas en Situación de Dependencia) | |
| Launched in year | 2007 | |
| Main objectives | Guarantee comparable public support across Regions for people who cannot lead independent lives for reasons of illness, disability or age. | |
| Nature and type of public intervention | Depending of their level of dependency, individuals may benefit from various in-kind benefits and services. If the competent administrations are unable to offer these services, the dependent person is entitled to receive financial benefits to access care services, to hire personal caregivers or to compensate informal caregivers (i.e. non-professional carers). | |
| Type of service providers and the competition between them | Social service providers are either public local providers or private external companies. The provision is organised through open competition with contracts awarded following a tendering process. | |
| The price level and price setting mechanism | Price level is set according to local authorities’ specifications as laid out in the tendering contracts. Service users pay a part of the total costs, depending on their means (on average 40% of the total amount). | |
| Type of employment relations | Workers can either be employed by private provider (i.e. triangular relationship) or directly by the user (i.e. direct employment relationship). | |
| The administrative framework and the role of the public authority | Autonomous communities are responsible for organizing the provision of services as well as controlling and monitoring the delivery. | |
| Type of services | Access to the following services are granted by the Dependency law :
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| Target groups (users and workers) | Users : dependants and elderly people.
Workers : those providing the assistance to the dependants as non-professional or professional carers. |
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| Effects | Employment | 166 000 employees are registered as social workers without accommodation for the elderly and disabled. |
| Creation and/or fostering of PHS activities | Overall, between 2009 and 2012, the number of social workers for the elderly and disabled has increased by 48%.
It has been estimated that the Dependency law would contribute to the creation of between 300 000 and 500 000 formal jobs – including the 115,000 existing informal carers of elderly people – by 2015. So far, the employment creation directly linked to the Dependency law has been estimated at 125 987 people in 2008. |
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| Reduction of undeclared work | No information found. | |
| Better working conditions | The Dependency Law has put the emphasis on the importance of qualification and professionalisation of the workforce, as a means of developing employment in the sector. | |
| Improving access to elderly care/long term care | By 30 November 2014, there were 729 313 beneficiaries with effective benefits and 167 869 people currently waiting to receive benefits (a decrease of 45.13% compared to January 2012). | |
| Budgetary effects | Public costs | The General State Budget has transferred to the regional governments 3.68 billion euros for financing care provided to people in a situation of dependency. In addition, regional authorities and local authorities funds the system up to respectively 30% and 50% of the total public funding. |
| Earn back effects | It has been estimated that the employment creation and regularisation could generate annual returns of €2 billion through unemployment benefit savings and social security contributions by 2010. | |
| Net cost | No information found. |