Training should provide families with the knowledge required to anticipate how the elderly person will act and behave, thereby offering a sense of security.

The activities must be aimed at overcoming the problems and difficulties that a family has when it lives together with an elderly handicapped person and at normalizing as much as possible family and social life (both the family's and the elderly person's). That is, to remove stress and promote a positive attitude to overcome difficulties.Training will be carried out through talks with a theoretical-practical content.

2. Psychological support

Situations of extreme dependence can lead both the elderly person and the family looking after him to suffer what is known as "carer's syndrome" with the psychological capitulation of the person who is responsible for looking after the elderly person.

In cases like those of families with a highly dependent elderly person in their care, personal exhaustion and a deterioration in family and social relationships may take place, due to states of non-acceptance of the disability, with psychological decline when facing up to this new situation, conflicts between family members, etc.

The training of self-help groups is based on the idea that people's own resources play a vital role in the search and solution of their needs, so that they take an active part in the transformation process that is necessary to achieve more favourable living conditions. These groups suggest training topics based on their needs, promote activities which favour family care and their quality of life, make it possible for families to help each other and serve as support therapy based on the exchange of experiences and the resolution of conflicts.

In our Historical Territory there are families living with elderly dependents (with varying degrees of physical, psychical or sensorial disability) who during the week have arranged for their elderly member to be cared for, either by someone from the family itself, or by staff paid by the family or financed jointly with the Civil Service, or as users of social services or installations (Day Centres etc.).

Given the fact that these families need to have a weekend without the obligation of looking after the elderly person or people who are directly dependent on them, in order to deal with certain family commitments, care for other members of the family, social relations, or just to have a rest or some free time, an alternative programme of limited weekend residential/day care is required to provide a response to these needs.

5. Relief services

The elderly person_often handicapped_can be taken in care by a residential home for a period of three-four weeks a year, so the familiy can enjoy their holidays and have some relief.

The state of an apartment determines the lifestyle of its occupants. Internal or external architectural restrictions, as well as certain minimum degrees of comfort, have an influence on the mobility and the social relations of the occupant of the apartment. In this regard, the aim of SENDIAN is to promote and make it easier for an elderly person to stay in his habitat, with a degree of personal autonomy that is acceptable in everyday life, by making it possible for the apartment to satisfy the minimum standards of habitability and to allow the elderly person to stay there for as long as possible.

Replacement of bathtubs by geriatric showers, adaptation reforms in the toilet, handrails along the corridors, special beds and armchairs, are some of the most demanded needs.

The aim is to provide financial support for families that live together with an elderly person and who have financial problems, in such a way that this offsets the specific expenses caused by the person who is being looked after.

Volunteers therefore, must, and in fact do play an important role in programmes such as this one, by supporting the family unit in order to keep the elderly person in the physical-social environment in which he has lived and taken part.

Visiting these elderly people or standing in for the person who is looking after them at a certain moment will strengthen the feeling of both the handicapped person and the people who are looking after him of being helped and integrated into a social network.

Taking into account the fiscal autonomy of the Basque Country, SENDIAN aims to promote the development of tax exemptions for families with elderly handicapped people and provide information on existing legislation with regard to tax exemptions for handicapped people and for those who live with them.