La ley de dependencia como renta de subsistencia de cuidadorasfactores que influyen en el uso de la prestación económica

Abstract

Abstract The care and attention to people in situations of dependence has been historically provided from the private sphere, characterized by the donation of time and the intra-family and intergenerational solidarity. Usually, women are the people to whom these responsibilities of care have concerned, as a result of a division of patriarchal family functions and the sexual division of labor. In 2007, the Act 39/2006 on the Promotion of Personal Autonomy and Care for Dependent People was passed, thus establishing the first subjective right in Social Services. Since the implementation of the act, there has been an over-dimension in the granting of the economic benefit for care in the family environment and support to non-professional caregivers, even though the original idea was the establishment of proximity services. The management of the act is related to our family social welfare model and the ancestral assumption of caregiver roles by women. At the same time, in 2007 a deep economic crisis began in Spain in which we are still immersed. During this period, the rate of poverty, inequality and unemployment have risen considerably, while there has been deterioration in the labor conditions of the population. In the Region of Murcia, both phenomena have developed to a greater extent than in the rest of Spain. On the one hand, it has been one of the Autonomous Communities with the greatest concession of economic provision for care in the family environment and support to non-professional caregivers on the set of economic benefits of the catalog of the dependence. On the other hand, during this period, poverty rates and social inequality have been among the highest in Spain without obtaining an effective response from the social protection system. The investigation has been carried out in the municipality of Murcia. The reasons for this choice are, on the one hand, the fact that it is within one of the most impoverished national territories, and on the other hand, it is where more economic benefits are being granted for care in the family environment and support for non-professional caregivers. The general objective of the Doctoral Thesis is to know what function is being fulfilled by the economic benefit for care in the family environment and support to non-professional caregivers in a context of economic crisis and budget adjustments in the municipality of Murcia, where it is the priority choice of the catalog of benefits and services of the act The research has been carried out from a methodological pluralism: analysis of secondary sources, elaboration and implementation of an ad hoc survey and interviews with privileged informants. The results of the research show us how the economic benefit for caring in the family environment and support for non-professional caregivers is being used mostly as a minimum subsistence income for caregivers: poor women who are low trained and are unemployed or inactive to take care of household tasks.