Kanton Uri
He played a key role in promoting housing for people with mental disabilities
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Urs Wegmüller was involved with the Phönix Uri Foundation for a total of 31 years. Now the long-standing President of the Foundation Board is stepping down and looking back.
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The Phönix Uri Foundation recently bid farewell to Urs Wegmüller at a small ceremony. He had helped shape the institution for people with mental disabilities for years. For 21 years, from 1991 to 2012, he was involved in the management. He has been the foundation’s president since 2012.
Urs Wegmüller in front of the Phoenix dormitory.
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When Urs Wegmüller joined the foundation in 1991, it was only running an assisted living community for four people. “A lot has happened since then,” he says. Today there is a dormitory for 18 people with mental disabilities at the canton train station in Altdorf. In addition, the foundation offers a lunch menu, runs a holiday program and looks after people who live independently. “I look back with satisfaction when I see how the foundation has developed,” says the outgoing president. “Thirty years ago there was no such institution in Uri.”
Foundation had to do some convincing
In the early 1990s, Urs Wegmüller worked as a workshop manager at the Foundation for Disabled Companies in Uri. In this function, he took a seat on the honorary management of the Phönix Uri Foundation. But Wegmüller also remained loyal to the foundation when he later accepted a new professional challenge in the education department of the canton of Schwyz. “I wanted to make a difference,” he says. “I wanted to stand up for those people in our society who don’t have it easy in life.”
Bernhard Schuler takes over the presidency
The Board of Trustees of the Phoenix Uri Foundation recently elected Bernhard Schuler from Flüelen as its new President. Schuler has been a member of the Phoenix Foundation Board since 2005. Patrik Benz-Gartenmann from Richterswil, who works as a psychiatrist, is also new. The board of trustees also includes Ruth Briggs (Schattdorf), Céline Huber (Altdorf) and Patrick Schuler (Bürglen). (pd/lur)
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The Attinghauser, together with the other members of the management board, was challenged right from the start. During these years, the foundation realized the dormitory, which was opened in 1995. The Phoenix Foundation had to do a lot of persuading to build the dormitory. “Most people hardly knew anything about mental illnesses, which is why there was a lack of understanding for our concerns among the population,” Urs Wegmüller recalls.
In order to broadly support the idea of housing for people with a mental disability, the board of trustees of the foundation, which was founded in 1983, had around fifteen people at the time. The representatives from politics, culture and professional circles formed a patronage committee alongside the honorary management. It was not until 2012 that the board of trustees was reduced to five people and operational management was transferred to senior staff. Since then, Wegmüller has served as President of the Board of Trustees.
Space problems became acute
A first major milestone in Wegmüller’s tenure as Foundation President was the purchase of the Strickermatte property in 2012. Until then, the Phoenix dormitory had building rights on a plot that belonged to the Uri children’s and family welfare organization. This purchase paved the way for an expansion of the home. The space in the dormitory was previously tight, and inpatient residential care was increasingly reaching its limits. In particular, there was a lack of space for the residents to be employed within the home and spend their free time there.
As more and more of them reached retirement age over the past decade, space problems have become acute. “People should feel comfortable in the dorm,” says Urs Wegmüller. “You can’t always go for a walk with the residents just because there aren’t enough lounges in the home.” A solution was needed. In 2016, the Phönix Uri Foundation was finally able to tackle the construction of the extension. This could already be obtained at the beginning of 2017.
What made Urs Wegmüller particularly happy: in June 2015, the Uri voters approved a commitment loan for the expansion of the dormitory with over 80 percent yes votes. “Today, our institution enjoys a lot of support from the population,” says Wegmüller. “The perception of mental illness is very different today than it was thirty years ago.” (pd/lur)
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