On Wednesday, April 16, 2025, Minister Marin Piletić presented contracts under the Call for Proposals “Innovative Social Services – Respite from Care”, a pilot project for the provision of an innovative social service of respite from care to persons caring for a household member who is dependent on their support.

The contracts, with a total value of almost 5 million euros, are co-financed by the European Social Fund Plus, and the implementation of projects, lasting from 12 to a maximum of 18 months, will enable support for the development and provision of innovative social services with the aim of preventing the institutionalization of service users while promoting overcoming the challenges posed by developmental difficulties or disability of a household member, as well as greater inclusion of persons with disabilities in the community.

Respite from Care is an innovative service that focuses on the needs of parents and caregivers, and Minister Piletić emphasized that the Government of the Republic of Croatia continues to work to ensure that persons with disabilities and children with developmental difficulties receive the support they deserve. “We have improved the legislative framework, raised the level of benefits, expanded the network of available services and made significant strides through investments in infrastructure. We did all this not just to show progress in numbers, but to enable a better quality of life, greater independence and more equal inclusion of these people in the community,” the minister emphasized. He also recalled the results of the “Zaželi” program, a kind of Croatian social patent, which includes more than 500 projects and almost 10 thousand employed people who provide support and assistance to almost 58 thousand users.

Director of the Stančić Rehabilitation Center Sanjica Grbavac emphasized that the respite service will help families achieve a better quality of life, listing the variants of the forms through which the aforementioned service will be provided, such as a mobile team in the home, short-term day care outside the home, short-term accommodation in branches of organized housing, individual and group counseling, psychosocial support, and individual and group counseling.

The president of the “Special Friend” Association from Dubrovnik, Dženita Lazarević, emphasized that the goal of implementing the pilot project is to help caregivers cope with stress, physical and mental strain, include a break from caregiving in the institutionalization prevention strategy, and increase the quality of life of dependent household members, with a special emphasis on their capabilities, rather than their difficulties, disabilities, and disabilities.