Barcelona City Council has significantly expanded its specialised support services for gender-based violence and child protection. The city has added 35 new professionals and established two new centres for the Service for Attention, Recovery and Welcome (SARA). This move aims to provide more comprehensive and accessible care across the city.
Fourteen new professionals now reinforce the SARA, a service dedicated to supporting victims of gender-based violence. These new staff members include social workers, psychologists, educators, legal experts, and administrative personnel. Deputy Mayor for Social Rights, Raquel Gil, highlighted this 34% increase in the service's workforce. "This expansion not only reinforces the service's response capacity," Gil stated, "but it also allows us to advance in the structural consolidation of the teams, reducing reliance on non-structural interim staff and guaranteeing greater professional stability."
The SARA is undergoing a profound transformation. It is moving from a specific care service to a specialised service, aligning with other Specialised Intervention Services (SIE) for gender-based violence. This structural change brings improvements in the care model, an expansion of resources, and a reorganisation of its territorial presence. It also strengthens institutional coordination.
New SARA Centres Enhance Accessibility
Barcelona will now have two SARA centres operating as a single service. The city has created a SARA in Nou Barris and a new SARA space in the Eixample district. This new structure ensures a balanced territorial distribution across two different points in the city. It makes the service more accessible to those who need support.
Data from 2025 shows the SARA attended 1,280 people. This included 903 women and 342 children and adolescents aged between 0 and 17 years. Of these, 256 women and their 207 children received care in residential shelters. The districts of Nou Barris, Sant Martí, and Horta-Guinardó accounted for 50% of all cases. Therefore, the Nou Barris SARA will cover these districts, along with Sant Andreu. The new Eixample SARA will serve the remaining districts of the city.
Expanding Child Protection Teams
The Specialised Service for Child and Adolescent Care (SEAIA) also sees significant reinforcement. The Municipal Institute of Social Services (IMSS) manages this specialised social service for child protection, delegated by the Government of Catalonia. SEAIA teams receive cases of children and adolescents in situations of helplessness or risk. They conduct in-depth, interdisciplinary diagnoses of children and their socio-family environments. They then propose appropriate measures to ensure proper development.
Barcelona's SEAIA teams are the largest in Catalonia. They have now stabilised 21 professionals across six of their territorial services. These new staff include psychologists, pedagogues, social workers, educators, and administrative personnel. The city has also reinforced management, creating a director position for each SEAIA and a technical support office. Barcelona operates eight SEAIA centres. Seven are distributed territorially by district, and one central SEAIA team handles priority cases and runs Niu, a psychotherapeutic treatment team.
Increased Capacity for Vulnerable Residents
The city has made improvements to its shelter facilities for women and children. It has significantly increased specialised residential places. Urgent and medium-stay places rose from 41 in 2024 to 92 in 2025. Additionally, the city offers 71 places in autonomy flats. In 2025, Barcelona also created a second Municipal Emergency Centre (CMAU) with 20 additional places. The IMSS has developed and implemented a new unified organisational, technical, and management model for SEAIA across the city over the past two years. This model strengthens the protection and integrated care for children and adolescents at risk.
These comprehensive changes aim to offer more integral, efficient, and woman-centred care. The new interdisciplinary teams and expanded facilities will ensure better support for Barcelona's most vulnerable residents moving forward.
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Originally published by Barcelona City Council Press Room. Read original article.
