The Minimum Vital Income (IMV), which since it was approved in May 2020 has been coming into operation in installments, begins in 2022 one of its most important chapters: the launch of the inclusion itineraries, the programs that will make the IMV stop being just financial aid and become a comprehensive plan to help recipients out of poverty and exclusion. The Ministry of Inclusion has already agreed with 16 institutions – autonomies, town councils and NGOs – to launch different pilot projects to support the beneficiaries of this benefit, which will be carried out over a year and a half and which are expected to reach , according to data from the department headed by José Luis Escrivá, to 77,061 people.
Each of the participating entities has designed its plan with its own approach based on its needs, interests or strengths; thus, for example, the agreement with Asturias pursues digital social inclusion, with measures such as vouchers for the purchase of tablets and for connect the house to the internet for a year o training itineraries in groups of six participants that will be taught throughout the territory of the Principality; the NGO Save the Children will focus on the transition of families with children from social exclusion to full social and labor integration with measures that act “on the family unit as a whole & rdquor ;; and the Madrid City Council has proposed interventions that, in addition to the socio-labour attention characteristic of these programs, also include measures of “family relief & rdquor; (support for conciliation, such as the supervision of minors or their accompaniment on their journeys to educational centers), and “positive parenting strategies & rdquor; (that reduce “family stress” and allow adults to focus on their labor integration).
In addition to the aforementioned institutions, the regional governments of Aragón, Castilla-La Mancha, Ceuta, the Valencian Community, Extremadura, Galicia, Navarra and the Basque Country, the Barcelona City Council and the NGOs Plena Institución, Hogar Sí, also participate in the pilot projects. , Gypsy Secretariat Foundation and Caritas.
Randomized controlled trial
These agreements were signed in the last bars of 2021, they have been made public over the last few weeks (this Monday the agreement between Inclusion and Castilla-La Mancha was presented in Toledo) and this Tuesday they have begun to be published in the Bulletin State Official (BOE). They will be financed with European Next Generation EU funds (109 million euros between the 16 agreements), and in addition to the usual controls and conditions they present an extra requirement for the institutions that execute them: that their effectiveness be evaluated through the controlled trial methodology randomized (RCT, for its acronym in English), that is, that among the beneficiaries a group to which they apply the new programs and one that did not (the control group), so that the impact of the measures can be verified with empirical rigour. The same technique that is used, ultimately, in clinical research to test new drugs.
In addition to this evaluation procedure, Inclusion has agreed with the Bank of Spain an extra layer of analysis: the Center for Monetary and Financial Studies (CEMFI), dependent on the supervisory institution, will carry out research based on the results obtained in the pilot projects . The data, conveniently anonymized, will be provided by the ministry, and CEMFI will contribute from them estimates of the impact of the measures in social and labor inclusion. Escrivá himself highlighted, during the signing of the agreement with the Bank in the middle of last month, that this type of formula allows for “public policies with a different approach, based on data, evidence and evaluation”, and that “the independent evaluation allows the design of robust policies that last over time”.
The inclusion itineraries are not only foreseen as a possibility in the IMV regulation from its design; They are also committed to brussels, and the implementation of pilot projects is one of the conditions for receiving European funds in return. The document that exactly regulates the milestones that must be met to activate the disbursements, the so-called Operational Agreement, states that in the first quarter of 2022 the Government must publish in the BOE eight agreements with “subnational public administrations, social agents and entities of the Third Sector” that include itineraries designed to increase the number of beneficiaries and the effectiveness of the IMV; that step has been fulfilled this week. For the first quarter of 2023, the agreement with the European Commission specifies that another 10 agreements must be signed, and in the first quarter of 2024 the evaluation of the 18 must be completed and published.