“We all have unrecognized disabilities,” Joan Berruezo, director of services at TEB Barcelona.
Joan Berruezo, director of services at the TEB Barcelona Cooperative Group: “The challenge is normality. To accept the different abilities of each person. We all have unrecognized disabilities.”
Barcelona, 2022. The quality of a society is measured by its ability to care for the most vulnerable groups, we read on the website of the TEB Barcelona Cooperative Group. About 50,000 people are legally recognized as having an intellectual disability in Barcelona, 42,000 of whom belong to the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona and increase to 73,000 throughout Catalonia. The figures double if we include people with mental health disorders or multiple disabilities. For all of them, work is a very important part of their life and one of the main concerns of their families.
50 years ago, this concern reached seven families in the Sant Andreu neighborhood of Barcelona, leading them to create a workshop school to educate their sons and daughters, aiming to integrate them into existing companies. Convinced that work dignifies people, they wanted their relatives to have opportunities and to secure their future for when they were no longer around. This was the origin of TEB Barcelona, which now has 1200 members, and whose mission continues to be to achieve an inclusive life for people with intellectual disabilities and also to provide support to their families.
Hoy, protagoniza nuestro blog el servicio de TEB Barcelona que se encarga de la jardinería en nuestra promoción de viviendas de Torre Vilana. Nos encontramos en el jardín para entrevistar a sus responsables: Joan Berruezo, director del área de Servicios de TEB Barcelona, y Mar Marín, responsable técnica de los equipos de jardinería en TEB Verd. Lo primero que destaca es sin duda la motivación e ilusión que desprenden ambos. Y al respecto, Joan nos aclara: “Por un lado, está nuestra labor social y por otro, nuestros retos personales como profesionales en cada proyecto. En ambos casos, se nos permite ofrecer un entorno inclusivo de calidad y maximizar la visibilidad de las personas con discapacidad, dando lo mejor de nosotros mismos en cada proyecto porque no hay que olvidar que, aunque no estemos etiquetados, todos poseemos discapacidades”.
While intellectual disability has been decreasing over time, the needs have not stopped growing. The director of Services specifies: "Over the years, scientific advances have reduced the percentage of people with intellectual disabilities. However, there has been an increase in needs and mental health disorders that we respond to. We welcome people from outside, we are specialists in intellectual disability, but as a social entity at heart, we work with the entire spectrum of people: mental health, physical disability, social inclusion, CIRE of Catalonia... They contact us through training centers and, above all, through families."
Joan explains the evolution: "When the workshop was created to train people with disabilities and integrate them into the regular company, they realized that individuals with intellectual disabilities possessed other high abilities. For example, a great ability to carry out quality manual assembly work. This was positive for both the people and the jobs, due to their capacity for repetitive, orderly work... and their great motivation. Thus, the school workshop evolved into a non-profit cooperative owned by the workers. At 18, they had the need for job integration, but these needs expanded with the development of the youth. Now we are 1,200 people and we offer: supervised apartments; more than 20 federated sports clubs; fan clubs for the main football teams; residences; a guardianship entity, which provides services that allow them to live independently in a cooperative manner; and the cooperatives. By putting people at the center, there has been an evolution with their growth."
The strong connection to the territory and the proximity of management have allowed the development of the group, composed of 7 social initiative cooperatives: TEB Habitatge, TEB Gestió, TEB Solucions, TEB Verd, TEB Vallés, and Taller Escola Barcelona, which is a second-degree entity. Berruezo highlights: "We have a governing council, made up of more than 50% families, and area management teams that allow for a swift response to our region, which remains mainly Barcelona and its metropolitan area."
We asked Joan to detail what the current challenges of inclusion in Barcelona are, and unequivocally points out: "Normalcy. Accepting the different abilities of each person. We all have unrecognized disabilities. So achieving normalcy is important. A person labeled with an intellectual disability might not be able to solve a complex algebra problem, but they might speak 5 languages or perform a task like gardening excellently. Just look at this garden!"
You're right, before us there are stretches of lawn, trees, and flower beds with a wide variety of native plants, alongside a small, meticulously maintained artificial stream. Mar Marín explains to us what the secret is: "Working at Torre Vilana has meant a substantial change for the team. It's a larger garden than usual with a high level of detail. Torre Vilana is the place where they learn the most, not just about gardening. They also learn to perform different tasks and, especially, to interact with clients and residents. Generally, in other spaces, it's the coordinator who interacts most with the client. Here, it's the workers who talk to them, answer their questions, and also attend to their suggestions and can quickly respond to the requests they make."
La directora de TEB Verd, que emplea a 75 jardineros y atiende a un centenar de clientes, también expone la satisfacción de trabajar aquí: “Ha sido un reto muy gratificante para el equipo de jardinería. Los residentes están muy contentos, según sus rapports, porque nuestros equipos se implican muchísimo. Y cabe desatacar que este jardín, con el nivel de mantenimiento tan perfecto, es un gran reto en sí mismo. Ellos, además, sugieren y proponen muchas mejoras. Tanto en el jardín como en las especies que pueblan el hábitat”, y concluye afirmando: “Para nosotros, la colaboración en Torre Vilana ha supuesto un excelente intercambio por la mejora de toda el área, nuevas vegetaciones e inclusión de plantas florales, y la satisfacción del equipo”.
We inquire about how they become known and how they receive work, and Joan replies: "Sometimes it's through social issues, other times through competitiveness, or through public tenders. We got in touch with Núñez i Navarro through a recommendation and quickly connected because of all the social value we bring."He emphasizes competitiveness: "Services like the gardening one we have here are provided with a large team of gardeners and a technical office, which allows us to design and carry out complete solutions, therapeutic gardens, like the one at Sant Pau that received the Barcelona + sustainable recognition and was the first on the peninsula, and sustainability projects like green roofs," and he notes: "At Núñez i Navarro we have grown, we entered Torre Vilana in October 2021 as the first lever and now we continue to expand with them different services."
Other areas of work and established services of TEB Barcelona include cleaning, concierge, document management and destruction, food delivery service for supermarkets and parcel delivery (last mile, sustainable, by walking people...). These are necessary jobs for many companies or associations and allow interaction with society and visibility for the group. In the industrial area, they offer labor-intensive jobs (small handling services, services for publishers...) and their own products, boasting the largest European factory for school paint, as well as their own food brands. Joan proudly adds: "10 years ago, we started in the food sector with gourmet products: salts, oils, pastries... with our own brand, of which we export 80%. For pharmacies, we have properly certified clean rooms... We are a company that generates employment, which is our goal. In Catalonia, only 7% of people with disabilities have a job, because there are no options. At TEB Barcelona, we strive to expand opportunities"
We asked Joan to tell us about their plans for the future and he confirms: "To move forward, our foundation is network participation (they are members of DINCAT in Catalonia and Plena Inclusión in Spain), with all the special employment centers of social initiative, non-profit. Together we try to improve the lives of people with disabilities through work. Collaboration is essential."
Since 1968 to the present, society has made significant progress. We are more inclusive and there is no longer a need to 'hide' disabilities. However, as highlighted by TEB Barcelona, we are still far from normality and acceptance of diversity in some areas. At TEB Barcelona, they learned many years ago that if society could not meet their needs, they could not wait and had to take action themselves. We can all contribute to making people with disabilities more visible and thus evolve towards 'normality' in order to achieve a diverse society.
To learn more about the outstanding work of TEB VERD at the Torre Vilana residential, go to the video.
