We were among the first to clamored for a “central measure” for the temporary closure of day and semi-residential centers for the disabled, in the presence of this Coronavirus emergency. They appeared to us as potential epidemic outbreaks: for the characteristics of vulnerability and fragility of users often compromised by debilitating diseases and for the impossibility of the same to observe self-protective prescriptions. Unfortunately, the news now proves us right: the problem has clearly been overlooked.
There is a first victim, the youngest of the Covid-19 deceased in Italy so far. It is a disabled boy who attended the day center “Il gabbiano” in Brescia, where an educator had tested positive at Covid-19. To his family, friends and friends of his center, colleagues and colleagues, our condolences and our solidarity go. Confcooperative and Legacoop Lombardia go so far as to say that 30% of their operators (presumably educators, oss) are sick or in quarantine. In the region hit first and hardest, timely directives were lacking and the choices on the closures were left to the managing bodies, not to say “discharged onto them”.
We believe that a provision for temporary suspension of the day centers of the Lombardy Region is, albeit late, urgent and can no longer be postponed. Finally, even family associations are clamoring for the temporary closure of day and semi-residential centers. Requesting replacement home interventions. Reasonable location. We believe that home interventions should be identified only for cases of extreme necessity, where the family is unable to bear the care and health burden of the disabled family member. Such interventions should therefore have purely nursing or care characteristics. We imagine that professional nurses and OSs are involved in these interventions, provided they are equipped with appropriate Personal Protective Equipment. Devices that are almost everywhere missing entirely or in short supply in the structures we are talking about.
Home interventions should respond to criteria of urgency, indifference and necessity: related to the sphere of the person’s physical health. We therefore believe that in this context educational activities by professional educators of day centers must be suspended (and re-evaluated those in residential services, limiting them to the essential where they cannot be temporarily interrupted). We also believe that EPs are not the deputies for home surgery during an unprecedented health emergency in the past hundred years.
For this reason, we also contest a position taken by the Presidents of the Commission of the register and the Tsrm Psrtp of Turin, Aosta, Alessandria, respectively Dr. Graziano Lomagistro and Dr. Floriana Simeone. The aforementioned register commission «urges and supports all initiatives to involve professional educators who work in schools in territorial education. In the application of their skills and in the provision of educational resources to support home interventions that require didactic, educational and relational support ». We understand the reasons and noble principles that inspired this stance, but we believe that at this juncture the risks of spreading the virus would be higher than the benefits,
The fact that part of the professional educators today falls within the definition of “health profession” does not make these operators experts in hygiene and prophylaxis, nor paramedical figures. It should also be added that, to our knowledge, no service has been registered differences in behavior (or in the imposition of behavior by employers) between EPs of the two distinct profiles (socio-sanitary and socio-pedagogical).