ASP Città di Bologna is the public company for Welfare services of the Municipality of Bologna.
ASP Città di Bologna originated in Bologna on the 1st of January 2014 from the merging of “ASP Poveri Vegognosi” and “ASP Giovanni XXIII”. The 1st of January 2015 “ASP Città di Bologna” incorporated “ASP IRIDES”, the third company specialized in younger in chancery.
It’s composed by some of the oldest institutions of the city.
ASP’s first aim is the organization and the provision of welfare and integrated social and health services in favour of the elderlies and particularly of those who are physically and/or psychologically non-self-sufficient, adults in need, to ensure a better life quality.
The company also focuses its efforts and its innovative actions on preventing the onset of social emergency phenomena and on promoting social inclusion through three different services related to different areas of intervention:
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Services for the elderly
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Immigrant and asylum seekers service
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Adult discomfort service
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Younger in chancery service
The clarification of the mission is a fundamental prerequisite for the construction of a quality service, because that is where the operating principles and its organizational structures spring from.
In all services for the customer of the ASP Città di Bologna the principles that guide the work are thus outlined:
a) Individualization of intervention
The quality of life of the customer within a service is determined primarily by the its capacity to respond adequately to the specific situation of need of the person; operationally, this means developing individualized care plans which, proceeding from the needs analysis, identify their goals, the resulting welfare actions, procedures and the time required for achieving them, as well as the resources (human and technological) necessary for their implementation. These plans (and the specific provided actions) must be periodically verified and adapted to the changing situation of need of the users;
b) Inter-professional integration
This principle introduces the realization of a service to the customer/person, offering not only a response to specific needs (health, welfare, etc.), but primarily the fruition of an environment in which they may express the abilities and potential they still have. This requires a comprehensive approach to the person and can be achieved only in a structure whose work methodology involves systematic tools of horizontal and vertical integration (weekly team meetings and/or core plenary, project staff, management, etc.).
The plurality of professional figures must operate by modulating the own specific professional intervention, integrating it with that of the other roles, within the framework of a common strategy and approach.
c) Integration between “internal” and “external” service
The social welfare structure arises as crux of the service network for customer and, since its functional articulation, it’s open and integrated with the territory and encourages the contribution of multiple and differentiated elements present on the territory (institutions, associations, individual volunteers, etc.);
d) Education, research and experimentation
A characteristic of the company has always been the promotion of training and research initiatives in the field of services to the elderly population, adults in need, immigrants and asylum seekers, younger in chancery, by comparison to similar experiences at regional and national levels and initiating projects of study and experimentation within the new welfare services and their management mode.
Over the years the expansion of the activities of the elderly sector was characterized by the choice to differentiate the offered services: the principles are respect for the choices of the elderly and their family and the individualization of the intervention that require not only flexibility of individual services, but also the development of a plurality of services which are complementary one to another.
So starting from a care home, next came a day centre and apartments with assistance, then the management of a day centre for assistance to the elderly with dementia, the construction and management of multifunctional centres for the elderly, in which four different types of services are linked together in a single area, diversifying the response to the needs of the elderly and creating a structure in which each unit is at the same time autonomous and integrated with the others.
In these centres a logical network strategy operates with the chance to experience new ways of welfare and to organize new types of services.
In fact, the increasingly urgent demand of the elderly and their families is not only for a specific answer to a specific need in a given period of time, but rather for a clear identification of one or more responsible figures – almost institutional care givers – who are able to act as qualified and effective reference points.
“ASP Città di Bologna” social welfare services for the elderly, though of different typological articulation, are united by the same mission, which can be identified in the implementation of structures that constitute credible functional substitutes (for organization, work methodology and professional style) of the home of the elderly.
The guest of the residence home for the elderly si provided with the following services:
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Assistance activities in accordance with the individualized care plan, ensuring hygiene and getting up both in the morning and in the afternoon, and the weekly bath;
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Health care and rehabilitation through weekdays with the doctor and the rehabilitation therapist;
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Protective and nurse service 24 hours through;
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Free transport service and accompaniment to medical visits outside the facility;
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Periodic involvement of the family members of the elderly both in plenary meetings to verify the performance of the service, and in individual interviews for the evaluation of the individualized care plan for the elderly;
Day Centre
The service has the aim of protecting and supporting the elderly and their families by promoting acceptable living and maintaining the residual autonomy of the elderly for as long as possible, valuing them as individuals, safeguarding the dignity and promoting their abilities. The day centre also maintains the relationship of the elderly with their reference territory by providing, in collaboration with the family and other volunteers, contact with people and places which are significant in the elderly person’s history.
Specialized dementia day centre
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The day centre specialized in the care of the elderly with dementia is a semi-residential service.
The service, which is meant for the elderly with dementia, aims at creating a prosthetic environment which is conducive to the maintenance of the residual capacities of the elderly and the reduction of behavioural disorders. It supports the families in assisting the elderly, providing qualified personal attention and support in tackling the disease also from a psychological point of view.
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Protected Apartaments
The protected apartments aim at reconciling the need for privacy and autonomy of the elderly, providing a proper and functional environment, with the need for security and certain reference points to whom turn to in case of necessity.
The ASP social services for the home care is a new city model for the home care support, developed together with “Municipality of Bologna” and “AUSL (Unique Sanitary Local Company) District of Bologna”.
The project includes a rationalization of the access phase and an assessment by assigning care profiles to the users. Then, this assessment is forwarded to the “ASP Unit for the home care”.
The “Unit for the home care” consists of two social workers and one care activities responsible (one unit for each of the six new districts), and has the responsibility of taking over the user trough the realization of the intervention plan. The Unit became the main reference for the user.
Services System in support of home care: it assists 2,000 users per year on average, who benefit from one or more of the following services:
· Home care;
· Day centre;
· Relief recovery;
· Domestic meals;
· Help line;
The definition of a “Single access Point” at ASP allows ASP itself to become a citizen reference for activities related to the orientation, training, recruitment of a family assistant and supply of grants. The projects, financed by INPS Management of public employees (Home Care Premium) and by banking foundations , contributed to the development and smooth running of the “Single Access Point”. Last year, have been served about 400 users-families.
Also, the “Unit for the home care” activates assessments to profiles coming from “AUSL hospital social services” for patients in need of home care, within the paths of protected hospital discharges (400 patients last year). The Unit, in this case, has the responsibility to define an intervention plan ( free temporary services home care) and relations with the Territorial Social Service, when in need of continuous home care after temporary intervention.
Support actions to caregiver: trough the project “Teniamoci per mano” (Let’s hold our hands), support to families of people with dementia and training paths for family members who assist an elderly at home.
Since 1st January 2015, “ASP Città di Bologna” manages all social services and social-health services previously managed by “ASP Irides”.
System of residential and semi-residential reception for minors and mothers with children; almost 500 minors per year.
Services for unaccompanied foreign minors, child victims of trafficking, unrecognized minors at birth; about 200 minors per year.
“Gandusio Project” for single-parent unit, 18 units in charge at the beginning of 2014.
Services of emergency reception for minors and mothers with children; more than 200 units per year.
Supplementary activities in juvenile criminal area; activation of about 70 work-paths per year.
Family centre with more than 5000 accesses per year, including the following activities:
· Family help desk;
· Adoption;
· Custody, realized within a provincial project;
· Family mediation;
· Maternity allowance, familiar unit allowance and “family card” distribution;
· Familiar voluntary work;
· Parent counseling;
· Projects and initiatives for specific targets: “Pippi”, “Magic years”, “Mom space”;
ASP Città di Bologna priorities:
· Ensure effectiveness and sustainability of the reception and protection system, especially towards unaccompanied foreign minors, child victims of trafficking and unrecognized minors at birth;
· Promote the practice of custody, and in relation to a community work and with the purpose of providing solutions for reception and protection to minors;
· Support and help the families in caring and educating children even though there are material difficulties or other kinds of difficulties;
· Promote development and empowerment of parenting skills
The main goal of the social inclusion sector of the ASP Città di Bologna is the strengthening of the culture of integration and to analyze, oppose and reduce social exclusion factors. The company focuses its efforts and its innovative actions on preventing the onset of social emergency phenomena and on promoting social inclusion, related to different areas of intervention:
- International Protection service: for Immigrants, Asylum seekers and Refugees (adult and minors)
- Adult discomfort service
International Protection service: ASP Città di Bologna manages locally the SPRAR in behalf of the Municipality of Bologna. SPRAR is the national Protection system for asylum seekers and refugees, realized by a network of Italian local actors with the financial support of the National Fund for asylum policies and services, to the objective of implementing projects for the integrated reception of refugees.
The local project of the Town of Bologna, which is part of the national network since 2004, in 2016 has welcomed 253 persons, under the coordination of ASP Città Bologna. ASP has in charge one of the most critical aspect of this system: the access point for information and accompanying migrants in the post-arrival and integration phase, on which we work together with specialised social organizations and institutional departments.
ASP is also part of Bologna Cares (www.bolognacares.it), the local communication campaign on asylum and humanitarian protection.
Adult discomfort service: ASP chose to experience “Housing first”, a homeless assistance approach that prioritizes providing people experiencing homelessness with permanent housing as quickly as possible – and then providing voluntary supportive services as needed.This approach prioritizes client choice in both housing selection and in service participation.
However, the vast majority of homeless individuals and families fall into homelessness after a housing or personal crisis. For these households, the Housing First approach provides them with short-term assistance to find permanent housing quickly and without conditions. In turn, such households often require only brief, if any, support or assistance to achieve housing stability and individual well-being.
ASP is also leading the Piano Freddo ("Cold Plan") to face and prevent winter diseases for homeless people (600 hundreds beneficiaries), the Unità di Strada ("Street Unit") on harm reduction for drug users, with thousands of contacts per year, as well as community meetings and activity centers aimed to social interaction and inclusion.
In residential and semi-residential services ASP offers retail to some 600 people per year.