The Father Damien Centre of Caritas Centre is a centre that aims to provide a dignified welcome to people who find themselves without a place to live and to offer them means to facilitate and strengthen their social integration. Its director, Alfonso García, says that "we have been working for twenty years with a clear objective, to provide a space where people can live and begin a process of personal recovery".
The aim is for them to reach the highest possible degree of autonomy, "although we do not always achieve this and there are times when people have to return to the centre after a certain while". At the moment there are about 30 people living together in the Centre. "The profile is around 80% men and 20% women, mostly Spanish".
About 190-200 people may pass through the Centre during the year. "People who need to live in a space like this invariably have a number of problems that lead them to live on the street: people with a drug addiction, with mental health problems, with possibilities for work but who are unemployed, unskilled people, people who have been in the nearby prison in Topas”.
The time spent in this house is two and a half months: That said, Alfonso notes that "there are people who have been here for more than a year and people who are here for two days. Our idea is not to limit time. What we do is to tell people that they will be able to live here as they journey forward, and we will accompany them on that path. There is no deadline, but we do not let them stagnate".
01/02/2020