Barça and Red Cross join forces to provide home support to the elderly

In order to attend to the needs of older members who might be the most affected by the coronavirus crisis, FC Barcelona and the Red Cross have reached a partnership agreement through which Red Cross volunteers will assist all members aged over 80 that the club has detected might need some kind of domestic support to cover urgent basic needs such as the provision of food and medicine.

The programme is part of the T'Acompanyem a casa (We’ll Accompany You at Home) scheme that the club set up last week for all Barça members in the senate or aged over eighty to keep them informed, deal with their concerns, and keep track of their health and moods during such difficult times. There are over 9,000 members in this group, and the club has already been able to make contact with 4,000 of them.

Thanks to the work being done by the Red Cross volunteers, the programme can now be extended. After making first contact by telephone, the club will be detecting the exceptional cases that require some kind of home help, particularly when members live alone or are especially dependent on the help of other people.

The project is an adaptation of the typical 'T'Acompanyem' service that the Red Cross provides on match days to help people with mobility difficulties to get to the stadium in an adapted vehicle or to get to their seats inside the ground. Set up in 2012, 'T'Acompanyem' has provided 10,425 services to fans on match days.

Although the Camp Nou is currently closed to the public, its main phone lines are still operative, and members can call in for free on 900 189900 and also email the club at oab@fcbarcelona.cat.

Joining the Cruz Roja Responde scheme

FC Barcelona is also joining the Cruz Roja Responde (Red Cross Responds) scheme to combat Covid-19 by helping the people that are most at risk. The project is open to all social and financial sectors in these times of serious crisis, and is being supported by such senior Catalan financial institutions as Fomento del Trabajo, the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce and PIMEC.

The Red Cross charity has always been ready to provide volunteer support for the many health, education, labour, social inclusion, environmental and humanitarian needs that have arisen since the outbreak of coronavirus. From March until last week, a team of 2,600 Red Cross volunteers had distributed 53,000 kg of food and medicine to people at risk in more than 150 towns.

The Red Cross is also directly managing seven hostels with more than 482 places for homeless or highly vulnerable persons in Barcelona, ​​Sabadell, Tarragona, Terrassa and Mataró.