Special Employment Centers: The Spanish Response to the Insertion of People with Functional Diversity and Its Impact on the Social Economy

Abstract

People with functional diversity constitute a vulnerable group that suffers the consequences of exclusion, which leads to the limitation of their freedoms and rights and to the impediment of their full personal development. Consequently, it is the duty of public administrations to guarantee specific measures that contribute to the full realization of the right to social inclusion. Especially, in the Spanish labor field, special employment centers play a key role due to their great effectiveness. For all of the above reasons and based on the need to contribute to the creation of a fairer and more inclusive society, the advances that have taken place and the different policies and measures implemented with respect to this issue have been widely analyzed by the academia. However, the main objective of this work is to demonstrate that public investment in these centers will bring a positive social return that not only results in greater well-being for people with functional diversity but will also benefit the economy as a whole. To this end, a novel approach will be proposed through the case study of COGAMI (Galician Confederation of People with Disabilities) as an example of reconciling economic, social, and environmental development with the integration of people with functional disabilities. Moreover, in order to offer an approach based on the cost-benefit analysis as well as an integrated assessment of the economic and social values of the organization, both the ISV (Integrated Social Value) and the SROI (Social Return on Investment) methodologies will be used.