Polibienestar is a leading institute in the area of social sciences. It is directed by Professor Jordi Garcés and since its establishment nine years ago, it has participated in 45 European research projects for a global amount of 50.2 million euros and 15 national research projects with a total amount of 1.2 million euros. Polibienestar manages 38% of European research projects in the whole area of social and legal sciences of the Universitat de València.  In 2018, Polibienestar obtained three health projects form the European Union and, in 2019, has obtained another five projects from the European research programme Horizon 2020.   The last project, VALUECARE, in which seventeen European research centres participate, has a total European Union funding of €5,776,376, of which €316,945 correspond to Polibienestar.

The aim of the VALUECARE project, explains Professor Garcés, “is to offer an efficient integrated care model dedicated to elderly people with cognitive impairment, vulnerability and/or multiple chronic diseases. The purpose of this model is to improve the life quality of these patients and their families, as well as to improve the sustainability of European social and health care systems. The model is based on an integrated value-based care perspective, which includes aspects of social care and lifestyles, as well as health care”.

Jordi Garcés holds a Doctorate in Political and Administrative Sciences, a Doctorate in Social Psychology, a llicenciatura (former Spanish undergraduate degree) in Philosophy and Educational Sciences (major in Psychology), a diplomatura (former Spanish undergraduate degree) in Social Work.  He has held the Prince of Asturias Chair at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and is a Professor at the Universitat de València and director of the Research Institute on Social Welfare Policy (Polibienestar) at the Universitat de València.

The Professor Garcés holds a Honoris Causa Doctorate by the Universitat Jaume I of Castelló and the Universidad de Asunción in Paraguay.  He has been awarded the Medal of the University of Burgos and has thirty years of continuous university teaching experience in subjects related to comparative European social policies and political ideologies and social welfare. Over the course of thirty years, his research activity, with five accredited six-year periods of investigation, has been carried out at the Universitat de València and other universities and research centres where he has spent stays as a guest researcher.  He is the author or co-author of more than a hundred scientific publications in Spanish, Catalan, English and German.