The National Association of Continued Care will request an urgent meeting with the Attorney General of the Republic because of the number of abandoned dependents or people without family who have been left in the care of these units.
According to the association’s president, José Bourdain, the courts “are inundating” the directors of the units with cases concerning these people, such as the payment of bills or the resolution of problems in the banks, preventing them from doing their job: managing the units.
“Both the public prosecutors and the courts inundate us with a series of steps that we have to take, concerning people who have been abandoned by their families, people who no longer have families or even illegal immigrants,” José Bourdain told , pointing out that, in some cases, the director of the unit is responsible for taking care of the personal affairs of these users and that many of these people have several people in charge.
The director of the unit – he stressed – “instead of directing the health unit (…), she is involved in administrative tasks dealing with things she has nothing to do with”.
José Bourdain said that this type of cases has been increasing and, therefore, the National Association for Continued Care (ANCC) will ask for an urgent meeting with the Attorney General to try to find a solution.
“This paralyzes the work of the unit,” laments the person in charge, who says he has already exposed the case to the Government, without receiving a response. “The Government does not solve, does not legislate to solve this problem,” he lamented.
Dulce Vargas, director of CerciTop (one of ANCC’s associates), told that she has already been forced to open accounts together with the user.
He explained that when the person is not able to make a decision for himself, a court case has to be filed to appoint a kind of guardian (accompanied major case).
When the person has no family, the institution, or the director of the unit, ends up being responsible for these people, many of whom are occupying vacancies in the long-term care network, although they should be in nursing homes.
When the person still has family, “if it is the family that delivers the case to the court, it is the family’s address that stays.”
“However, if we want to help and facilitate the families by delivering the process ourselves, then the institutions, or the directors themselves, are responsible. I have already received information at my tax address,” he added.
In these cases, the directors of the institutions are “obliged to visit the address of the person, where he or she is no longer, and deal with everything that has to do with electricity and gas contracts,” she said, asking for a solution to these cases.
According to the data provided, the associates of ANCC have in their institutions 275 cases of major accompanied, 61 users abandoned by their families and 54 users without family hospitalized (although not all dependent and under the responsibility of the institutions or directors).
The president of the ANCC says that one solution would be “to create a state department, eventually with magistrates leading it, and in which the Portuguese state itself would assume these responsibilities.
“Who should assume the responsibilities of these people who, from a cognitive point of view, do not have the capacity to manage their daily lives should be the state, not these units or the directors of the units,” he stressed.
The official also argued that, in the final analysis, “the court orders impinge on the company’s rights with regard to the employment contract it has with its worker.”
“The company is paying a salary, has a person to exercise a certain function and that person is at the service of the Portuguese State and the Portuguese courts. It’s unthinkable, besides the fact that he’s not fulfilling his function, which is to run the health unit”, he added, insisting that these cases, in the last two years, have been increasing.
