Signed yesterday morning, at the headquarters of the City of Cremona Foundation in Piazza Giovanni XXIII, the Collaboration Agreement – valid until the end of the mandate, 2024 – for the management of citizen welfare which involves, in addition to the Foundation, the Municipality of Cremona and the special Cremona Solidale company. Present at the table, the President and members of the Board of the Foundation: Uliana Garoli, Fiorenzo Bassi, Paola Romagnoli, Giancarlo Bosio; the general secretary Lamberto Ghilardi, the mayor Gianluca Galimberti and the councilor for Social Policies and Fragility Rosita Viola; the member of the Board of Cremona Solidale Maria Luisa Rocca.
From the point of view of the properties, the agreement provides for the start of the renovation works, at the expense of the Foundation, of a wing of the historic building in via Brescia by the end of this year: the new integrated Day Center will be built here. Soldi, the Alzheimer day center, and on the first floor a community for the elderly of a hotel type with rooms with one or two beds and in the future also mini-apartments. Together with the apartments in via XI febbraio (Casa Raspagliesi), the mayor Galimberti said, “an innovative welfare model that Cremona has been pursuing for some time is given impetus. The increasingly elderly population deserves further services, because the traditional residential response of RSA is no longer enough and carers cannot be an alternative for all families ”.
“We need new services that are also economically sustainable and that enhance the autonomy skills of our elderly. This is why we create places, both in via Brescia and in the city center, with apartments in which to live autonomously, but protected, with shared services, people such as doctors, nurses, assistants who guarantee an assistance presence for all, with a load of lower spending on families, with the possibility of using technologies for innovative health care. Our task, as a system, is to propose new solutions, which enhance as much as possible the resources that even the elderly can still give to our community, and there are many ”.
Concern was expressed for the holding of the RSA: in Cremona Solidale the admissions of new guests resumed, but the total capacity was reduced according to the rules of distancing. “Fundamental – added Galimberti – is the keeping of our RSAs which at this moment, with the Covid emergency, are going through a difficult phase. I also felt with the mayor of Brescia Del Bono, the situation is similar everywhere: the RSAs do not hold up. There are two kinds of problems they have to face: the treatment of frailties and the employment implications. The Municipality has set up new resources and we also ask the Region to help strongly, otherwise the situation will be very difficult ”.
To ensure the sustainability of the works (to which the Somenzi donation contributes in part), a fundraising campaign will soon start with the slogan “Cremona is Solidale”.
The president of the Uliana Garoli Foundation gave a brief excurus on the dramatic months of the pandemic experienced by the city: “The Foundation is the home of all the Cremonese, even in this very particular moment, in which we have all been marked. Our city has lost a generation of seniors, but it has also set its energies in motion in the best possible way. The Foundation in recent months has had the feeling of not being able to do everything that was necessary: we have concretely supported the hospital “, said Garoli, pointing to the pulmonologist Giancarlo Bosio who, as is well known, was at the forefront,” and we dedicated the annual Barbieri Prize to the young people of CremonaAiuta. Now our commitment is to rethink the spaces where citizen welfare takes place for a new sociality, which we cannot give up despite everything “.
In addition to the intervention in via Brescia, the agreement provides for the strengthening of the service network in the complex of via XI febbraio, with the recently renovated housing all rented at moderate rents (4 of which are temporarily destined to rotation for cases identified by social services ) and inserted in the green lung of the Garden communicating with the services of the cooperatives of the Consorzio Il Sol.co / Civico 81: with the resumption of schools, the Garden has become a place of lessons and recreation for the maternal and primary Holy Family and the primary Realdo Colombo.
Saturday morning ended with the inauguration of the exhibition of 15 works – 14 paintings from the personal collection of the painter Giorgio Mori and a terracotta, “Girl with cello”, by Giusy Asnicar – illustrated by Tiziana Cordani, curator of the Artists’ Collection of the twentieth century of the Foundation, unique in the city. The exhibition will remain open until January 8th.
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