Community Centers

What is the Community Center?

The creation of Community Centers aims to contribute to addressing the lack of an integrated approach to planning and implementing social policy at the local level, to addressing the fragmentation of actions by individual agencies without central planning and the uneven spatial distribution of social infrastructure and services in Municipalities.

Community Centers are the sensors of each Municipality for all social protection services that citizens need. They constitute the first point of contact of citizens with the social service of each Municipality. From there, citizens are informed about all the benefits they are entitled to, all the agencies, services and programs that provide them with social care of any kind, at the level of the Municipality, Region or territory. They constitute the basic “core” of expanded “One Stop Shop” type services, with a personalized holistic approach, which, in collaboration with the Social Services Directorate of each Municipality, constitute an “umbrella” action providing services that respond to and strengthen the policies that are already implemented or planned, such as the universal implementation of the Social Solidarity Income (SSI), the FEDA (Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived) food program, the implementation of active employment policies in collaboration with the OAED, etc. Their operation seeks to develop a local reference point for the reception, service and interconnection of citizens with all social programs and services implemented in the intervention area.