The Mayor of Orihuela, Monica Lorente, visited the new Astrapace centre in Orihuela last week and announced that special needs provisions will soon be made for children on the coast. She was accompanied by the Valencian Councillor for Social Welfare, Araceli Vilella, during the visit to the centre, which is located in Orihuela city.

The centre specialises in teaching and supporting children with special needs and their parents. It is an invaluable service for those families but coastal residents have had to make an 80 kilometre round trip to the centre for that service. Later this year when the two new infant schools on the coast are opened, they will also be fitted with special therapy rooms so that children with special needs on the coast will no longer have to make that long trip.

During the visit the Mayor also announced that the Town Hall is committed to the centre, its staff and its services and will continue to support it. The decision was wholeheartedly welcomed by the centre´s Director, Luisa González and the President of Astrapace, Rosa Garcia. Ms Garcia, who has been in charge of the centre since its inception in 2001, commented: “The centre has come a long way in the last decade. We started off in a rented room in Avenida Teodomiro with only natural light from the windows to illuminate it and now we have these fantastic facilities in the District of San Isidro, where we can look after more than 100 children and for that we are very grateful.”

The centre is, in fact, near to its capacity of 140 and specialises in caring for children between the ages of 0 to six years with developmental problems which have originated pre, peri and postnatally. They offered specialist therapy and have a wide range of equipment to facilitate that therapy. One parent whose child attends the school said: “The children gain a sense of social and scholastic integration at the centre and their confidence increases with each day that they attend. The therapists are brilliant and the centre offers physiotherapy, speech therapy and stimulation therapy as well as hydrotherapy as part of its essential services.” The Town Hall has agreed a budget of €524,461 for the centre in 2011 and the Valencian department for Social Welfare has committed to an annual contribution of €320,000 for the centre.