Excellence in Communities Winner: BIOCUIDADOS – COCEDER, Spain

The BIOCUIDADOS project, led by COCEDER, is a pioneering initiative that strengthens social services in rural areas, ensuring that care and support are adapted to local needs, environments, and communities. By fostering community-based action, the project promotes social inclusion, demographic regeneration, and sustainable local development, allowing individuals to remain in their communities with the necessary support to maintain their quality of life.

Discover the transformative journey of COCEDER, as they share their experience of implementing the BIOCUIDADOS project and its impact on rural communities through their award-winning work in Excellence in Communities.

1. What does winning a European Social Services Award mean for your organisation? How do you feel about this recognition and experience?

For COCEDER, this means that our work in the field of social services in rural areas is recognised. We KNOW that this type of service needs to be adapted to the people, the environment, the local scale and the proximity. This can only be achieved through INTEGRAL, community-based action.

It also means giving visibility to an entity that has been working for over 30 years in the field of equal opportunities, serving people who live IN VILLAGES, and doing so from a plural and diverse perspective.

This award is synonymous with support for a model of care that we propose for the rural environment. In this model, the community is a key and determining element in improving people’s quality of life and well-being. We have experience of building, regenerating and maintaining welcoming, inclusive communities that provide support and care. This is the cornerstone of demographic regeneration (by retaining people), economic regeneration (by developing services) and social regeneration (by increasing social capital).

2. Why did you choose to apply for the 2024 European Social Services Awards?

There was a great affinity between the theme of the Awards and the BIOCUIDADOS Project. The experience developed in the field of the care community in rural areas and the impact evaluation developed, provides added value that we consider deserved to be known and recognized.

3. What is the added value of being part of a European Network for your organisation? Why is it important to share practice and projects with other actors across Europe?

For our organisation, it is very clear that if we want the social services of the future to include a rural outlook and perspective, and to be based on the local and proximity, it is fundamental that our model be included in public policies.

We need to encourage co-creation in the field of social services and develop methodologies for listening to the community in order to start from needs that are not covered and that are requested by the community (BOTTOM UP). We can do this with the help of organisations that apply this methodology and that are in touch with people, territories and communities and are an integral part of the ecosystem

4. How does your winning project support inclusion in the community?

Biocuidados draws its inspiration from the preservation of the primary ecosystem to protect the community of people living in rural areas. The project was born out of experimentation two and a half years ago, with the aim of capitalising on the values and resources of the rural community and putting them at the service of help and care for its members (a community of primary relationships and proximity), finding ways of making these services sustainable and respecting people’s right to choose to remain in their environment by providing the help they need to maintain their life project.

This social innovation project has been tested in 18 rural areas called ‘comarcas’ across Spain. We are currently in the process of defining the community-based care model in rural areas, bringing together the knowledge, methodology, results and innovative solutions that have verified the initial hypotheses of this project.

It is more natural to respond to the support and care needs of people living in rural areas from a local, global and integral perspective, as well as from a more efficient and community-based point of view. Segmented (skills-based) responses to people’s needs separate and fragment them and, in rural areas, drive them out of their environment.

5. What were the key reasons for the success of your project?

It is more natural to respond to the support and care needs of people living in rural areas from a local, global and integral perspective, as well as from a more efficient and community-based point of view. Segmented (skills-based) responses to people’s needs separate and fragment them and, in rural areas, drive them out of their environment

Biocuidados draws its inspiration from the preservation of the primary ecosystem to protect the community of people living in rural areas. The project was born out of experimentation two and a half years ago, with the aim of capitalising on the values and resources of the rural community and putting them at the service of help and care for its members (a community of primary relationships and proximity), finding ways of making these services sustainable and respecting people’s right to choose to remain in their environment by providing the help they need to maintain their life project.

Our key aspects

1. Be part of the local 

• From the community. (proximity)
• Of people’s problems
• To provide solutions that, based on individual needs, provide community responses (from RED)
• This requires PRESENCE, BEING AND BEING PART. The project has been developed through our partner entities that have been in the territory for many years, they are part of the ecosystem.

2. Person-centred care with a community approach, placing the person in their community

• with the concrete reality of the person (listen)
• with its diversity and complexity (understand/understand)
• with chosen actions and with meaning for the person (identity)
• oriented to their permanence and connected with the community
• community action with purpose and intentionality

3. From the Logic of  proximity and the relational plot

• It involves working on a network: addressing solutions from this perspective involves
  • Jointly define the problem
  • Share resources and connect them
  • Work from horizontality
• It is necessary:
  • Seedgrounds of social relationships
  • Drivers of community action (our partner entities)

4. Transversality (Community Orientation)

Person-OrientedWorking with the person, without age, condition, ability, origin, etc., without segregation. This is more natural, inclusive and welcoming.

The responses to the problem are not fragmented by competences, the solutions are integral

For this it is necessary to have a team of people who work with this perspective of integrality from the community

• • They connect the community with people who need support
  • People integrate and connect with their community
  • The system of relationships is taken care of

6. Why should an organisation enter the Awards in 2025?

Because of the recognition it entails, the visibility, the relationships established with other organizations and Administrations.

Specifically, I believe that the entities that intervene in social services in the territories, with people, provide added value in participation

Learn more about the Excellence in Communities category and all the shortlisted projects in 2024. You can also explore all the categories of the 2024 European Social Services Awards and discover the inspiring initiatives recognised this year.