Services for people with mental illness and their families

Feafes Galicia provides people with mental illness and their families with information and advice about mental health, resources and services that can be useful for them. Our professionals offer individual and personalised attention. Moreover, we have a legal advice service to give guidance in legal matters related to the mental illness: pensions, inheritances, incapacitations, criminal and working problems, etcetera. Also, we offer early attention to relatives of people with recently diagnosed mental illnesses. With the purpose of making it easier for them to manage the difficulties derived from the new familiar situation, we offer advice, training about mental illness, information about resources and emotional support. It is as easy as contacting us and we will offer you a first appointment to help you.

Centres of psychosocial and working rehabilitation offer daytime, global and multidisciplinary attention to people with chronic mental illness. The aim of these centres is to keep people with mental illness in their environment, promoting and supporting their psychosocial integration, in order to make them develop a major autonomy and independence. More precisely, they develop the following activities: training in social skills, training in daily life activities, leisure activities, psychoeducation, prevention of relapses, pre-working activities and occupational therapy. Besides, the support to families is also among the functions of FEAFES, favouring their abilities and resources to get adapted to the illness.

Through the Family Schools we offer support and psychoeducational training with the aim of improving the quality of life of people with mental illness and their families. Self-help groups are a useful resource so that families can have moments to share experiences and feel they are not alone. These groups mean a different space in which families are the focus of attention, possibilities of mutual learning are offered and the cohesion and the feeling of support, reinforced.

For those people with mental illness who do not have the possibility of living together with their relatives or even independently, there are two types of protected houses: protected flats and mini-residences. In both cases, they are controlled by specialised staff.

In Feafes Galicia we offer information, advice and support to job insertion by working as a cooperation centre of the Galician Public Service for Employment. For that reason, we have the Observatory of Employment for People with Mental Illness (OEDEM, in Spanish), whose purpose is to facilitate the job insertion through actions of information, guidance, training courses, job mediation with companies and support to get and keep the job position.

Besides, we have occupational centres, a social service for the development of people with mental illness. The main objective of these centres is to overcome, within the limits of each person, the obstacles that the illness means for their social integration. In these centres, activities such as occupational therapy and product or service production take place under the supervision of the technical staff. In addition, services of personal and social adjustment take place in order to make people with mental illness have a broader personal development and a better adaptation to their social relationships. The purpose is to achieve the future integration of these people in a company or a special job centre.

We also have special employment centres, with the same structure and organization as a company, where people with mental illness have a productive and paid job, adapted to their personal characteristics, which also helps to their job integration in the labour market.   

On the other side, we have a program for job insertion of inmates of grade 3 and former prisoners who have a mental illness, which can be applied all over Galicia.

To improve the quality of life of people with mental illness, it is essential that they integrate completely in society. Leisure activities organized by Feafes allow improving the quality of life of people with mental illness and their families. Therefore, participants in these activities break their daily routine, practise some physical activities created from a playful perspective, are culturally enriched, socialize and integrate in society. At the same time, families get a break from their carer’s duties. Throughout the year, the Service of Leisure and Sports organizes stays in a vacation house, trips, programs of cultural activities and sports. Moreover, we have leisure groups that make playful activities in different villages of Galicia all thorugh the year.

Families and caregivers of people with mental illness devote a big part of their time to take care of them. For this reason, in Feafes Galicia we organize leisure and sport activities for people with mental illness, allowing families and carers to have some free time, knowing that their relatives are enjoying a playful activity, and that they are accompanied, at all times by specialized instructors.

Our organization works in the five prisons of Galicia with the Protocol of Comprehensive Attention to the Mental Patient (Paiem, in Spanish). The objective of this initiative is improving the quality of life of inmates and prisoners of grade 3 with mental illness, increasing their personal autonomy, their adaptation to the environment and boosting their abilities. In order to reach that goal, therapeutic sessions as well as educational, formative and sport activities are organized, coordinated by a multi-disciplinary team which monitors patients medically and psychologically. Some professionals of Feafes Galicia also take part in these teams. Besides, this program is aimed at the social reintegration of inmates, making it essential to keep a continuity of care in the network of communal socio-sanitary attention. In order to fulfil their integration in society, we have started a program for the incorporation of inmates of grade 3 and ex prisoners to the labour market. Likewise, families of inmates also receive psychological support and training.