Independent Living Apartments for People with Mental Health Conditions - Fundación Rey Ardid

Since 1992, the Rey Ardid Foundation has managed a network of supervised apartments for people undergoing psychosocial rehabilitation, with housing located within the social environment of the municipalities of Zaragoza and Calatayud. These apartments constitute a community-based residential resource integrated into the mental health network of the Aragonese Health Service and are registered in the Register of Social Action Entities, Services, and Establishments.

The aim is to facilitate the recovery of people with mental health conditions, ensuring their integration and active participation in the community through comprehensive support. This includes the acquisition of instrumental and daily living skills, both at a personal and social level, related to coexistence and community life.

The program offers two types of housing depending on the level of support required: one with intensive and continuous care, providing close accompaniment and direct intervention to accelerate the learning of daily living activities and the development of autonomy; and another with less intensive support, focused on consolidating achievements and fostering more independent community integration. Typically, people begin in the intensive modality and, in a planned way, transition to a temporary apartment where training, employment, or other forms of occupation are encouraged, with the goal of eventually accessing independent housing. This gradual approach makes it possible to adapt the intensity of support to each person’s progress, ensuring a process of emancipation oriented toward independent living, with individualized accompaniment that promotes personal and social autonomy, supported by flexible supervision and intervention levels adapted to individual needs.

The Independent Living Apartments represent the final stage of this residential alternatives program. The process includes continuous follow-up and intervention in all areas affecting a person’s mental health, actively encouraging the planning of a life project toward independence. The intervention progressively focuses on consolidating independent living in the community, promoting integration into training, employment, and healthy leisure activities.

The Rey Ardid Foundation emphasizes that housing is a key factor in mental health recovery. Without a decent, safe, stable, and adequate home in which to settle, many rehabilitation efforts may be compromised. People with mental health conditions face significant challenges in accessing and maintaining suitable housing due to insufficient income resulting from situations of vulnerability or poverty—often linked to limited opportunities for training that would enable stable employment under fair conditions—together with difficulties and deterioration in social skills, as well as discrimination and stigma associated with mental illness diagnoses.

The service includes accommodation, training in instrumental, functional, and technological skills, nutritional support, integration of healthy habits, domestic economy and financial planning, community accompaniment in accessing health, social, educational, employment, and occupational resources, and the creation of individualized therapeutic plans.


Responsible Department or Unit

Mental Health Department


Target group

People diagnosed with severe mental health conditions, marked by significant challenges in daily functioning and by the long-term or intense nature of their difficulties. They require specialized psychosocial support to strengthen their autonomy and move toward independent living.


Methodologies and approaches

  • Individualized Therapeutic Plans
  • Support for responsible and informed decision-making
  • Promotion of experiences that foster the learning and integration of personal, social, coexistence, and community participation skills
  • Intensification of support during times of crisis or symptom exacerbation, ensuring self-care management with personal and community resources, thus preventing hospitalizations or traumatic experiences
  • Design of individualized pathways for acquiring instrumental skills related to basic activities of daily living
  • Comprehensive health approach in collaboration with public system professionals, encouraging an active role in personal health care
  • Progressive development of a life project toward independence, which may include integration into training, employment, and structured use of time
  • Support and training in the management of domestic and personal resources, including meal planning, household maintenance, and administration of basic supplies
  • Creation of integrated care networks together with other actors involved in supporting the person
  • Active participation in designing group structures and activities based on the knowledge, interests, and curiosity of each project participant
  • Access to shared housing as a platform for emancipation
  • Access to a wide range of occupational, relational, educational, and leisure resources and experiences, enabling a personalized plan adapted to each individual’s uniqueness, based on experiential learning
  • Creation of a time bank among project participants, fostering a network of mutual support exchanges, collaboration, and participation, building support networks enriched by each member’s contributions
  • Exercise of active citizenship based on rights, with guidance and information, particularly in the socio-health field
  • Interventions shaped by respect for Human Rights in Mental Health and guided by WHO QualityRights training
  • Multidimensional vision of recovery, grounded in community mental health principles and addressing symptomatic, functional, identity, and life project dimensions
  • Philosophical integration of the concept of “expert by experience”.

The Therapeutic Accompaniment Model is central to our methodology. It acts as a health resource rooted in the everyday, relational, subjective, and social dimensions, offering listening, support, containment, and psychological understanding of individual processes. This complementary approach is at the service of the person, their family, and their treatment, enabling the creation of individualized accompaniment processes. The intervention is multidisciplinary and network-based. Additionally, training and socio-occupational pathways are provided, both through the Foundation’s own resources and those of the wider network, as well as activities and dynamic groups, whose creation and evolution adapt to the needs of participants.


Elements of innovation and creativity

  • Hybrid model combining housing, therapy, and community integration
  • Flexibility of services based on each user’s progress
  • Co-designed rules and collective responsibility for the functioning of the apartment
  • Integration of residents into the life and services of the local community

This model emphasizes horizontality in the relationship with users, where professionals act as support figures and therapeutic companions rather than authority figures, fostering autonomy and shared responsibility.


Support to Independent Living

Experience-based learning has proven to be the most effective way to integrate new skills, competencies, abilities, and knowledge. By combining this model with personalized on-site support, both within the shared housing and beyond, users are encouraged to develop autonomy and responsibility in a real-life context. It enables residents to take part in meaningful routines, build social connections, and progress toward more independent forms of housing, thereby reducing dependence on institutional care.


Staff and resources

  • One full-time psychologist/coordinator, one full-time social worker, two part-time therapeutic companions, and one full-time monitor.
  • A network of fully equipped shared apartments in Zaragoza (4 independent living apartments and 9 assisted apartments for people with lower levels of autonomy).
  • A network of employment resources (Labor Integration Center, Employment Exchange, Special Employment Center) and social inclusion resources (leisure and free-time programs and an Inclusion through Art Center) managed by the Foundation itself.
  • Access to day centers, community resources, and public and contracted health services.
  • Materials for practical training in daily living activities and for group activities: mindfulness (mats, cushions…), sports activities (equipment such as dumbbells, resistance bands, balls, padel rackets and balls, footballs…), new technologies (tablets, e-books, touch screens, computers, virtual reality headsets…), etc.

Identifying specific needs

Users take part in planning their therapeutic goals. Their preferences and feedback are regularly collected and integrated into service adjustments, both in the joint development of their individualized intervention plan and in the design of group activities to build diverse skills together with other participants.

Review sessions are also held for the general housing contract, where the relevance of rules, rights, and responsibilities is discussed in relation to individual health care, coexistence, the apartment itself and the neighborhood community, and the therapeutic team. The aim is to keep updating the regulations and contract in line with emerging needs and the diverse circumstances and uniqueness of each person.


Other stakeholders and partners

If the person considers it appropriate, they may invite their significant others to participate throughout the accompaniment process or to collaborate at specific times. At the same time, the person’s environment and social network are encouraged to become involved, to participate, and to feel like active agents in the process not only of recovery but also of collective mental health, through psychoeducation, activism, association work, and advocacy.

Work is carried out in coordination with the users’ reference Mental Health Units, local social services, and other nonprofit organizations, both in referrals and in providing support and continuity of care.

The team is part of several health councils in the city of Zaragoza, promoting community mental health initiatives with a focus on prevention and health promotion, and participating in community activities alongside other citizens.

There is also a dissemination strategy for the community mental health care model, aimed at building fluid coordination networks, exchanging knowledge, expertise, and good practices, making specific mental health resources known and accessible to entities and citizens, generating synergies and collaborative opportunities, raising awareness in mental health, acting in prevention, and facilitating not only early detection but also a first response that is effective and efficient.