The way home is where you can find welcome, care and support. Sometimes that stress doesn’t necessarily correspond to the usual residence. People are often forced to move away from their homes for health reasons. Those who have to move to another city or from one region to another to undergo necessary treatment need help finding an accommodation and getting around in an unfamiliar area.
LILT Milano Monza Brianza Aps and A Casa lontani da Casa OdV, with the support of Enel Cuore, the Enel Group’s Onlus, have joined their forces in the Volontariato 4.0 project to provide hospitality and support to those forces into health migration and to promote a model of out-of-hospital, territorial and personalized care through the country.
Finding housing, having directions capable of guiding people in the services available around health and care facilities becomes part of a comprehensive intake of the patient and accompanying family members.
The goals of Volontariato 4.0:
- Facilitating treatment through taking care of people and promoting the well-being of the entire family.
- Encourage the helping relationship through the creation of new contact channels, digital and otherwise, between the hospital and the territory.
- Support the patient and the caregiver in managing basic needs in the target area.
The project will provide free housing in the cities of Milan, Florence, Rome and Padua for families of the patients in economic hardship, but also support for necessary health and non-health services through new tools. The involved foster homes are five LILT's Case del Cuore in Milan, Casa AMSO and Casamica onlus in Rome, Associazione AIL Firenze Odv in Florence and Per Una Nuova Vita Odv in Padua.
The goal is implemented through the enhancement of paper and digital tools available to patients, where information capable of guidance can be easily found.
They are identified by the image of a Robin, a symbol of hope and life enduring hardship: a true guide who orients and welcomes the patient to make him or her feel safe and to ensure everything that can improve the quality of his or her life away from home.
Tools have been developed to enable the patient and the caregiver, once they arrive in the city of treatment destination, to get information about the neighborhood of the referring hospital and the area of the home to find answers to specific needs, such as finding supermarkets, pharmacies, stores or support associations.
Totems have been installed in hospitals, reception and waiting areas and interactive maps have also been made. For the digital-minded, through intuitive mapping, you can position yourself on a place of interest and with a simple click you can navigate and find facilities and services.
Digital totems are placed inside two hospital facilities, "Edoardo Bassini" in Cinisello Balsamo (Milan) and Fondazione Irccs San Gerardo dei Tintori in Monza (Monza Brianza). Interactive maps, on the other hand, can be found on the "At Home Away from Home" website for all of the nursing homes participating in the project.
For those who continue to be more comfortable with traditional tools, dedicated brochures have been produced for you to keep and easy reference, with all the essential information. They are available in cardboard totems placed inside the foster homes and respective referral hospitals.
"LILT is there and has always been there for patients forced to travel for treatment. A phenomenon that was dangerously diminished during the pandemic due to the difficulty of traveling. Through networking and the support of entities such as Enel Cuore, we give help and welcome to patients forced to migrate for treatment. When the disease forces people to move away from home, the whole family has to face, in addition to the emotional stress caused by the disease, aspects related to travel arrangements and staying close to the treatment facility: an additional burden, which aggravates family concerns and management - emphasizes Marco Alloisio, president of the League for the Fight against Tumors of Milan Monza Brianza. - Going to meet their needs is fundamental. With the synergy of Volontariato 4.0 we provide immediate, easy-to-consult tools: one more way of welcoming."
"We have just made the interactive maps available on our website and on totems in homes and hospitals. This is a particularly significant part of the project for us - highlights Guido Arrigoni, president of A Casa Lontani da Casa - which has seen the third sector come together with the goal of bringing public health care closer to people after all the difficulties caused by two years of pandemic. We thank Enel Cuore Onlus for giving two entities so deeply rooted in the territory, LILT Lega Italiana Tumori and A Casa Lontani da Casa OdV, the opportunity to carry out such an important common project."
"The Volontariato 4.0 project is an initiative that fits perfectly with the values of Enel Cuore and therefore supporting it is a commitment to which we are very attached - says Filippo Rodriguez, Managing Director of Enel Cuore. - The centrality of the person, particularly if he or she lives in a condition of fragility and difficulty, is a founding value of our non-profit organization, which strongly believes in the realities that care about the lives of those who, as in this case, fight with a delicate enemy to face and need all the support of their family and the best services even in the out-of-hospital setting."
Volunteers also play a key role in the project, in supporting and accompanying those who are forced to migrate for health reasons. Groups of volunteer-tutors, after appropriate training, will be able to provide help with general orientation. Their already active presence in homes helps the psychological well-being of the entire household by activating support for daily needs or simply for company.
To ensure the effectiveness of the Volunteerism 4.0 intervention model, a monitoring activity will be carried out by LILT workers. This will be the starting point for future project analysis with the goal of providing year after year adequate out-of-hospital care that is increasingly adherent to the needs of patients and their families.