Casa de Santa Ana - Saúde Comunitária para Pessoas Idosas
The Casa de Santa Ana is the making of an instrument of change; change of the social misrepresentation of the elderly as second class citizens, as a burden to their families and society. The change happens when each community can care for and ensure the healthy aging of its members, as well as ensuring their participative voice and their rights and needs.
About You
About You
First Name
Maria de Lourdes
Last Name
Braz
@CasadeStaAna
Facebook Profile
About Your Organization
Organization Name
Casa de Santa Ana
Organization Website
www.casadesantaana.org.br(em revisão)
Organization Phone
21 33422027
Organization Address
Travessa Débora 107 Cidade de Deus
Organization Country
Brazil, RJ
Country where this project is creating social impact
Brazil, RJ
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
How long has your organization been operating?
More than 5 years
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Innovation
Entry Form title
Casa de Santa Ana - Saúde Comunitária para Pessoas Idosas
What change do you want to bring to the world?
The Casa de Santa Ana is the making of an instrument of change; change of the social misrepresentation of the elderly as second class citizens, as a burden to their families and society. The change happens when each community can care for and ensure the healthy aging of its members, as well as ensuring their participative voice and their rights and needs.
What are the primary activities of your project?
Casa de Santa Ana's general objective is to act in promoting social health, physical and cognitive rehabilitation among the elderly population, as well as to qualify and expand their political and community leadership. The house was founded nearly 20 years ago, and works to prevent the “hospicilization” of old people by increasing their degree of autonomy, promoting intergenerational integration, and by amplifying and qualifying the network of care services and social protection for people over 60 years of age.
The developed methodology is considered a model and is a reference for developing human resources trained to work with the elderly and their families at various levels, both formal and informal caregivers of seniors. The program activities are organized in Casa de Santa Ana’s main office: comprehensive care programs with direct services performed through the Centro Dia (Day Center) and Centro de Convivência (Partnership Center). In these spaces the elderly have access to social services, complementary therapies (acupuncture, shiatsu, “pranatherapy”), individual and group therapy, nursing, psychology, primary care in health care, food supplements (four daily meals and food baskets), and a varied socio-cultural programming, in which children, the youth and family members are also invited. Both centers are located in Cidade de Deus (City of God) in the west region of Rio de Janeiro and serve an average of 150 people a day. The Qualification and Training Program began to systematize their methods and began to direct as well as elderly relatives, as many of them with a greater degree of caring for relatives and neighbors who required more attention. This methodology and content were increased and training and qualification activities have become regular activities of the House, particularly for training elderly care-takers.
What is innovative about your initiative? How is it a new contribution to the field?
In Brazil, where social security and health services for the poor have low quality or are nonexistent, the population over 60 is increasingly vulnerable. Any Brazilian over 65 years proven poor are eligible to receive a minimum salary of from federal welfare programs, and that grant often becomes the only family income. While families are obligated by law and need to stay with their elderly members, few know and have the means to do so.
For these poor families, having an elderly relative with special needs can be financially and emotionally disastrous. Cases of abuse and neglect of older people occur regularly. The innovation of the Casa de Santa Ana was to replicate the model of "daycare" as a place of shelter, care and learning. If senior family members leave their houses during the day, releasing their family members of temporary responsibility reduces expenditures on food and basic health care.
The admission of the elderly to the Casa program mobilizes the family to participate in educational activities about dealing with older people, which reduces family stress and decreases the risk of domestic violence. Added to the fact that it increases autonomy, the focus of Casa, making it less expensive to care for and live with the elderly.
Another key aspect of the contribution of this model to health care, day centers is to drastically reduce risk of falls and other health accidents that crowd the hospitals and health centers, and can cause irreversible consequences in older people.
What stage is your project in?
Operating for more than 5 years
Tell us about the community that you engage? eg. economic conditions, political structures, norms and values, demographic trends, history, and experience with engagement efforts.
The Cidade de Deus (City of God) neighborhood, where our activities are developed, has 38,000 inhabitants. Of these, 3,656 (9.6%) have more than 60 years of age. Of its population, 24.7% is considered poor. The community is among the four major slums of the city with the lowest income per capita and has one of the biggest unemployment rates in the city, 22.5%. It is one of eight districts – among the city’s 160 -- that have no cultural facilities (such as theaters and concert halls, cinemas, museums, art galleries, public libraries / special schools / musical societies, cultural centers and spaces.) This reality becomes takes an especially high toll in the elderly population, who often find himself alone in his home, having their potential family caregivers working in the informal economy. The community has serious problems of hygiene and urban sanitation (waste management). Crossed by a river that receives sewage and garbage, are great risks of flooding and the spreading of vectors that carry various diseases.
Share the story of the founder and what inspired the founder to start this project
Born in the interior of the State of Paraiba, he moved with his family for 2 years of age for Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. Very soon he lost his mother (11 years), and out of extreme poverty in which he lived with his father, an aunt and 3 younger siblings at the age of 17 fled to Rio de Janeiro, where he finished elementary school, made course to help nursing and surgical instrumentation, married at 21, had 3 children (one biological), started his training in social work at age 28, and 33 was formed, alone and starting the project in Cidade de Deus (City of God). The awakening to the issues concerning the elderly, came from direct contact with many elderly residents in a geriatric institution, their only training field and main source of theoretical and practical learning in this area.
In the institution, the treatment offered was the most comprehensive and worthy, but like most nursing homes, for obvious circumstance, it promoted social isolation and withdrawal from family, which is the fundamental basis for the physical and emotional health of the majority human beings. There, elderly with depression were frequent. The sadness of not having family around, the house itself, the furniture and personal belongings, caused a visible picture of loneliness. "In visiting other institutions could see that the changed socio-economic level, but the picture was the same. The absence of the family was the biggest complaint. This finding made me look around and seek alternative forms of care without isolating."
Social Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
Please describe how your project has been successful and how that success is measured
A pioneer in Brazil, the Casa de Santa Ana has implemented two major models of care recommended by the Law 8,842 of 1994 and the National Policy for the Elderly: the Partnership Center with preventive activities through educational, artistic and cultural activities and the Day Center. The impact indicators of Casa de Santa Ana are measured considering two aspects: the reduction of health risks present in seniors and the promotion of their social and community leadership. The risk reduction includes the prevention of asylum, domestic violence, and increase recovery of autonym and primary health care (blood pressure control, dressings, food supplement) and the promotion of social and community leadership. Casa provides more than 8,000 services per quarter. (For example, in healing varicose ulcers are made in the rate of 500 per month.)
Evaluations are done based on the variation of the degree of autonym in the elderly when they get home, as well as in the case of wounds (curative), the variation of its size (diameter). Casa does not make any diagnosis of complementary actions and works with health policies. Casa participates in all consultative forums on the rights of older people that promote institutions and community actions and agendas that have resulted in intergenerational coexistence between old and young people in key areas of social and cultural communities.
How many people have been impacted by your project?
1,001- 10,000
How many people could be impacted by your project in the next three years?
1,001-10,000
Winning entries present a strong plan for how they will achieve growth. Identify your six-month milestone for growing your impact
Consolidation of the training model for family caregivers and professionals alike, strengthening intergenerational activities and participation in community development forums.
Task 1
Courses and lectures of qualification and training of family caregivers and professionals.
Task 2
Intensification of socio-cultural interactions, especially those that promote intersections between the “Charter of Children and Adolescents” and the “Charter of the Senior Citizens”.
Task 3
Restructuring strategies of external communication (website, social networking, blog)
Identify your 12-month impact milestone
Increase in the number of people aware of and able to care for and live with older people and situations diminishing risk aggravating and home and community health for the elderly.
Task 1
Supporting and fostering the creation of accessible local services for the elderly, expanding the EU network of social protection.
Task 2
Expanding role of the Casa de Santa Ana in spaces of local governance.
Task 3
Broadening the channels for the dissemination of the “Charter for the Elderly”.
How will your project evolve over the next three years?
The Casa de Santa Ana will expand their actions through the diversification of partners. The direct care will be consolidated and we are already working to be able to subsidize the opening of the consulting front, as well as working with professional and effective participation in governance forums.
Sustainability
What barriers might hinder the success of your project and how do you plan to overcome them?
Overall investments in health are related to productive capacity. Children are the future, and when young people and adults will work forces, but the elder is not related to any recognized economic value. Our biggest challenge is to educate governments and investors with social relevance and importance of social support actions for the elderly.
Brazil has had declining birth rates and infant mortality and increased the longevity of its population. The demands of the elderly are diluted within the agendas of other segments, such as people with disabilities (special needs), for example. The Elderly Statute is a legal framework that will facilitate the overcoming of prejudice against the elderly and low interest in investments in the segment. Finally, another argument that has been valuable to demonstrate the savings in public health could be in investing in healthy aging.
Tell us about your partnerships
The establishment of strategic partnerships is essential both for economic sustainability and to ensure the visibility of the issue. Our partners have ensured that the public and the community recognize the demands and values of the elderly. The recognition of the methodology of the care home, through partnerships, proves the feasibility of community-managed health care for the elderly, and confirms that it is possible to eliminate the process of “refugeeing” within the health care system.
Current annual budget of project, in US dollars
$50,001‐100,000
Explain your selections
Friends and families contribute to the safety and protection, routine care, and voluntary actions in any institution. The individual donations are still small, and are periodically carried out only by people whom the cause resonates. The funds from foundations generally see through public announcements or statements, and these are intended for specific projects. NGOs / CSOs collaborate with financial support, partnership and mutual cooperation, exchanges, education campaigns and so on. The companies contribute through financial support and services. Local and national government contribute more effectively to socio-cultural activity developed by Casa de Santa Ana.
How do you plan to strengthen your project in the next three years?
Casa has been investing in the systematization of its model for providing advice in the implementation of policies of care for the elderly. The success of investments in partnerships in the professional qualification of the organization opened horizons beyond the direct care, signaling the economic viability in the field of consulting services to governments and businesses. Recent legislative changes on social policies for the elderly put Casa de Santa Ana’s methodology in evidence as the success of these new services take place within currently established legal parameters.
Challenges
Which barriers to health and well-being does your innovation address?
Please select up to three in order of relevancy to your project.
PRIMARY
Lack of affordable care
SECONDARY
Lack of physical access to care/lack of facilities
TERTIARY
Limited diagnosis/detection of diseases
Please describe how your innovation specifically tackles the barriers listed above.
Brazil’s Universal Health System (SUS) is one of the most advanced models of regulatory policy over health of the world. From the legal point of view it provides access to all types of services and resources from prevention, diagnosis and care to all Brazilian citizens. But in fact SUS’s management is notoriously ineffective, leaving a large margin of adequate care of the population. The Casa de Santa Ana provides free primary care and facilitates through partners, and additional therapeutic and educational access to the treatment of diseases. The Casa de Santa Ana also participates in consultative forums on public policies for the elderly.
How are you growing the impact of your organization or initiative?
Please select up to three potential pathways in order of relevancy to you.
PRIMARY
Enhanced existing impact through addition of complementary services
SECONDARY
Influenced other organizations and institutions through the spread of best practices
TERTIARY
Leveraged technology
Please describe which of your growth activities are current or planned for the immediate future.
Casa de Santa Ana has already taken initial steps to this growth through expansion and diversification of services provided directly in partnership with local networks. The training of professionals and policymakers allows the dissemination of the methodology and the common achievement of shared goals. And these new areas have driven us to systematize and improve the technologies, processes and social participation.
Do you collaborate with any of the following: (Check all that apply)
Government, NGOs/Nonprofits, For profit companies, Academia/universities.
If yes, how have these collaborations helped your innovation to succeed?
Government partnerships are contributing for the execution of the model against the public policies; the nonprofit give support and help with the expansion of the Project. The financial support of companies is fundamental to the maintenance of the Project, coming to meet the fulfillment of its social role, partnerships with universities expand are playing a relevant role in the field of information management and the training of more skilled professionals in the areas knowledge about the public concerned.
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