The Education department has awarded €195,860 in grants to cover psychopedagogical treatment for children with special needs

Benidorm City Council has approved an expenditure of €195,860 to help families with children with specific needs pay for the private psycho-educational treatments these children receive to mitigate these needs.

The Local Government Board has approved the final resolution of this aid, which will benefit 160 children with learning and/or behavioural difficulties or disorders of various kinds this year, as explained by the Councilor for Education, Maite Moreno.

The councillor noted that this line of aid is aimed at students registered and enrolled in educational centres in the municipality, of compulsory school age or at younger ages in the case of early stimulation, who have a diagnosis or are undergoing a diagnosis for a learning disorder due to difficulties associated with ADHD, ASD, developmental or cognitive delay, or specific learning difficulties (reading, writing, arithmetic). as well as special needs related to oral language, school inability to adapt, behavioural disorders, early stimulation, or high intellectual abilities.

Moreno indicated that these grants "cover part of the private treatments that beneficiaries receive to overcome reading, writing, and/or learning difficulties, improve oral language, treat school inability to adapt, and behavioural disorders; as well as early stimulation or those aimed at developing high abilities." In some cases, "students receive combined treatment to address two of these areas," added the Education Minister, who also emphasized that "in recent years, these grants, as well as the number of beneficiary families, have continued to grow."

Specifically, "compared to the €98,000 awarded in 2019, this year's call for applications has yielded €195,860 and 160 grants, meaning that in just six years we have practically doubled the funds allocated to help families with children with specific needs in their homes." The councillor emphasized that this increase in funding "is further proof of how important it is for this governing team to stand by families, especially those with more limited resources, so they can access these types of treatments that are key to the personal and/or academic development of their children." "We don't want any Benidorm student with special needs or who requires treatment for a disorder to be left behind," she added.

Regarding the amount of aid each beneficiary will receive, Maite Moreno explained that "depending on the type of treatment, the amount of aid granted ranges from 95 to 230 euros per month for ten months, that is, the duration of a school year excluding July and August, with a maximum aid of 2,000 euros per student."

The Councilor for Education concluded by stating that these treatments "are essential for students, both personally and academically, and hence the effort the City Council is making to ensure, through these grants, that all students in Preschool, Primary, and Secondary education who need it can access this psycho-pedagogical care."