Residential Valldoriolf home

The home is based on complete care for people with learning difficulties with extensive, generalised needs and with health problems and/or behavioural disorders. Their autonomy is encouraged and people are placed at the centre of all processes. Their families, professionals and different agents involved in the care dynamic at the home and the day care service are involved so that every person can develop their own project to achieve a satisfactory life.

However, it is considered strategically essential to promote living in diversity in the local area and a key aim is to promote the social inclusion of people and to raise social awareness in the environment.

It provides a replacement home suitable and adapted to care for people’s needs for help in all everyday activities, meeting individual rehabilitation and treatment needs. Motivating activities are offered that are meaningful for those involved, prioritising activities as a therapeutic tool and carrying them out in the community to promote social inclusion.

It provides support for families or guardians in relation to the person cared for by the Accommodation Service.

Life projects and Interdisciplinary Individual Care Plans (PIAI) are drawn up using all the information collected and with the participation of the person concerned, their support group and the interdisciplinary team.

Facilities

The Valldoriolf home and Specialised Day Care Centre is built on a flat site measuring 2,700 m2 on a 5 ha property belonging to FVO.

At the main entrance there is a large entrance hall for multiple uses, including reception, technical service offices, meeting room, toilets, medical service and infirmary, pharmacy and areas intended for day care service or specialised activities: physiotherapy room, sensory stimulation room, multimedia room and the processing and beauty products workshop room (the last four lead into the garden).

Then there is the central corridor that running to the end of the building and separating the residents’ area from general services (machine room, maintenance workshop, staff room, laundry, kitchen and staff changing rooms).

The laundry and cleaning service is run by the Foundation’s Xavier Quincoces Special Work Centre and the catering service, subcontracted to the company RC Serveis, has a kitchen in the centre’s facilities. A team of two people with disabilities from the Special Work Centre are included in the kitchen staff. The menus are drawn up and revised each month by the centre’s nursing service.

The spaces devoted to everyday living consist of three units with the same distribution and composition: a corridor separates the bedrooms on the left from the bathrooms and living rooms on the right.

In Unit A is the sick bay bedroom with two beds used in cases when it is appropriate to provide additional medical or health care. It consists of six bedrooms with three beds and two single bedrooms.

Units B and C each consist of six bedrooms with three beds, one bedroom with two beds and two single bedrooms.

In most cases, the bedrooms house three people, always of the same gender. The wardrobes and beds are personalised so that the residents feel the bedrooms are their own. It also makes it easier for them to recognise the space.

Each unit consists of four rooms, a bathroom, a toilet and the residents’ bedrooms. All the living rooms overlook the garden outside.

Units A and B have a living area with television and video. At the end of the corridor is the office and the large dining room.

History

One of the initial aims of the County Association for Parents of People with Learning Difficulties was to offer a residential service for people with severe learning difficulties in Granollers and the county. The service was intended to house people who, for various reasons, could not receive the care they needed in their own family environment. To make this project happen, the association’s management board began contacts with the Government of Catalonia’s Minister for Social Welfare Antoni Comas i Balldellou to suggest the construction of a home for people with serious learning difficulties. After several meetings, the proposal was taken up by the minister, once the process for carrying out the project had been approved. Among the agreements, the association pledged to assign the property where the home and day centre were to be built to the Catalan Care and Social Services Institute (ICASS) – now the Office for Social Inclusion and Promotion of Personal Autonomy (SISPAP) – of the Department of Social Welfare.

The general assembly held by the association on 10 February 1990 unanimously adopted the agreement to “assign to the Catalan Institute for Care and Social Services (ICASS) of the Government of Catalonia 15,812.5 m2 in the north of the property within the municipality of Roca del Vallès, belonging to this Board, to be used to build a centre for people with severe learning difficulties under the following conditions: the assignment will be for a period of 99 years, provided it is used for the care of people with learning difficulties and people from the county of Vallès Oriental will have preference for admission”.

Construction work then began, to be completed in the summer of 1994. While the work was going on, the Vallès Oriental Private Foundation for people with Learning Difficulties (FVO) was set up by the unanimous wish of the County Association for Parents of People with Learning Difficulties, which assigned the foundation all its assets, including the property where ICASS was given the right to build the home and day centre.

The new centre, built on a flat site measuring 2,700 m2, came into operation on 5 October 1994 and was opened on 26 November that year by the minister Antoni Comas.

The centre is entered in the Register of Social Services Organisations, Services and Establishments of the Government of Catalonia’s Social Welfare Department with the number F-13,022. The property and movable goods inside the centre belong to SISPAP (formerly ICASS) but it is managed by the FVO, which was awarded the contract to run the centre under a public tender process on 25 July 1994.