The Mifas Group has launched a service in the Girona regions to help people who have suffered a traffic accident to lead a life "as autonomous as possible" at home.
This is the Accessibility and Independent Living Training Service and is aimed at affected people who, once they leave the clinics where they have undergone rehabilitation, find themselves "lost", because they do not have an adapted house and there are no medical personnel either.
Through this program, the entity provides them with a specialist therapist who "trains" them to live life and routines.
The general director of Mifas, Albert Carbonell, explains that most users find that the emotional shock "overwhelms them" when they get home because "suddenly their lives have changed."
This 2024, twenty people will benefit from the Mifas Accessibility and Independent Living Training Service. This is a privately funded program that seeks to provide the necessary tools to people who have recently suffered a traffic accident and will have to live in a wheelchair.
This initiative is intended especially for people who have recently left specialized clinics such as Guttmann or Vall d'Hebron and must return home.
The problem is that, once the first recovery from the accident has been carried out, the victims find that their home is not adapted nor do they have specialist professionals like in the centers where they have carried out the rehabilitation.
Furthermore, they are still in a very early stage of recovery and are "lost" by the architectural barriers they have in their environment.
The general director of Mifas, Albert Carbonell, explains that this situation represents an "emotional shock" that must be added to the fact that they are still assuming that they will have to live in a wheelchair "for their entire life."
"This is where the comprehensive therapist comes in who offers this program and helps those affected improve skills to make daily life easier, in "a new reality," he explains.
"In the clinic you assume what has happened to you and since everything is adapted, you can live a relatively normal life. But when you leave there you find that everything has changed," says Carbonell.
Carbonell explains that the professional carries out "individualized work" with each person, given that "each one has different needs." "Obviously a 20-year-old person is not the same as a 65-year-old person. They have different lifestyles and different abilities," says the president of Mifas.
This first edition of the program will serve around twenty people, but it is expected that it can be opened to others in future editions if funding is available.
The entity continues with the counseling program for people who have a disability. In this sense, Mifas offers the service that gives these people the keys to acquire the necessary materials that best suit their needs.
