Portal de la Dependencia
Information Sections
CHAPTER III Dependency and assessment
Article 26. Degrees of dependency.
1. The situation of dependency shall be classified in the following degrees:
- Degree I. Moderate dependency: when the person needs help in order to perform various basic activities of daily living, at least once a day or when the person needs intermittent or limited support for his/her personal autonomy.
- Degree II. Severe dependency: when the person needs help in order to perform various basic activities of daily living two or three times a day, but he/she does not want the permanent support of a carer or when he/she needs extensive support for his/her personal autonomy.
- Degree III. Major dependency: when the person needs help in order to perform various basic activities of daily living several times a day or, due to his/her total loss of physical, mental, intellectual or sensorial autonomy, he/she needs the indispensable and continuous support of another person or when he/she needs generalised support for his/ her personal autonomy.
2. Each of the degrees of dependency established in the previous paragraph shall be classified in two levels, depending on the person’s autonomy and on the intensity of care that is required.
3. The intervals for determining the degrees and levels shall be established in the scale that is referred to in the following article.
Article 27. Assessment of the situation of dependency.
1. The Autonomous Communities shall determine the bodies for assessing the situation of dependency, which shall issue a report on the degree and level of dependency, specifying the care that the person may require. The Territorial Council shall agree on common criteria for the composition and action of the assessment bodies in the Autonomous Communities, which shall in any case be public.
2. The degree and levels of dependency, for the purposes of assessment, shall be determined by means of the application of the scale that is agreed upon in the Territorial Council of the System for Autonomy and Care for Dependency for subsequent approval by the Government by means of a Royal Decree. This scale shall include in its references the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) adopted by the World Health Organisation.
3. The scale shall establish the objective criteria for assessing a person’s degree of autonomy, his/her capacity to perform the various activities of daily living, the intervals in assessment for each of the degrees and levels of dependency and the protocol with the procedures and techniques to be performed in order to assess the aptitudes that are observed, where applicable.
4. The scale shall assess the person’s ability to perform by him/herself the basic activities of daily living, as well as the need for support and supervision in performing such activities by people that have intellectual disabilities or mental illness.
5. The assessment shall take into account the appropriate reports on the person’s health and on the setting in which he/she lives and consider, where applicable, the technical aids, ortheses and prostheses that have been prescribed for him/her.
.