The president of Faro City Council today suggested the creation of a body similar to the Commissions for the Protection of Children and Young People (CPCJ), with national status, to reinforce the protection of the elderly.
Addressing the Secretary of State for Social Action and Inclusion, Clara Marques Mendes, during the opening session of a seminar in Faro, Rogério Bacalhau proposed the creation of an organization similar to the model of the current CPCJ. “An organization with national status, whose mission was to protect the elderly, increasingly abandoned, increasingly exploited”, he added, in his intervention at the seminar, “In Faro, violence is not accepted, period!” .
The mayor later explained to journalists that the great advantage of the CPCJ is that they do “monitoring and mediation work” with families in order to improve situations, but “when things don't work” it is possible to appeal, in last resort, to the courts.
“The CPCJ works on the basis of mediation, but then it has a force behind it that, if it cannot reach an agreement, can impose certain rules. And this is something that, somehow, is also missing in this issue of the elderly, where children and family members often treat people badly, leaving them alone and the person feeling unwell. There needs to be an authority here that, in some way, forces this not to happen”, he stressed.
The mayor also recalled the “pioneering” creation, by the Chamber of Faro, of the Municipal Commission for the Promotion of the Rights of the Elderly of Faro, in 2022, as a result of the experience of helping the elderly during the covid-19 pandemic.
“It is an organization that, bringing together several skills, helps seniors to have better care and, above all, to not become easy prey for those who might mistreat or defraud them”, he said, about thr work carried out with “hundreds of people”.
This commission works in a network with the help of the PSP and GNR, which are the first to flag isolated elderly people, particularly in the rural areas of the municipality, then allowing more direct monitoring by the police forces and municipal services.
“In rural areas, there are many people who live isolated. People who were born there, now their children are far away, they have no other family and they need daily support. This is a lot of what the commission does”, pointed out the mayor.
The Secretary of State for Social Action and Inclusion, Clara Marques Mendes, considered this municipal commission an “extraordinary example” that should be “replicated” by other municipalities.
Regarding the Farense mayor's suggestion, the governor said that it deserves reflection within the scope of the work to create the Statute of the Elderly, the preliminary draft of which the Government is currently preparing, which will aim to “consecrate a set of fundamental principles regarding the elderly and their autonomy".
The Government intends to look at “the challenge that demography” is posing to the country, helping people to live until later “with dignity, quality and well-being”, she said.
“We can never accept situations in which, for example, an elderly person stays in a hospital because they have nowhere to go. Although he no longer needs healthcare, he has no support, no one to pick him up. We have to be at the forefront of the solution and protect the elderly, because this is a form of violence”, highlighted Clara Marques Mendes.
The “main concern” must be to ensure that all elderly people are able to, “first of all, remain in their home, in their usual way of life, with adequate support”, such as a home support service or a informal caregiver status, she said.
Source Lusa
