translated from Spanish: Paula and Orfelina de Puente Alto: two households that pass the El Agente Topo test

“This is like a recognition, as an award to me. Actually, I feel like I earned the Lotus,” says María Laura Muñoz Apiolaza (65), a supporter of the Senior Long Stay Establishment (ELEAM), “Paula”, located on Ramón Núñez Street in Puente Alto. 
An older adult herself, despite her royal face, fitness and encouragement, she is in charge of 7 older adults in a house that can accommodate up to 9 people. He manages that ELEAM for 6 years, when the previous owner, his boss, died, and the son wanted to disarm the house “and blow up the grandparents,” he says. “I wanted to even sell the furniture, the beds and liquidate everything, when almost everything in here is theirs.” That’s how I took over.” 
It is estimated that in Puente Alto there would be about 52,000 adults over the age of 65 in a commune of 568,000 people, representing just under 10 percent of the total. Hundreds of them live in households like “Paula,” many of which work irregularly, because they do not have the requirements required by authority. 
Decree 14 regulates the operation of ELEMs, as they are called acronym and technical jargon, and imposes requirements on their owners or supporters regarding the number and technical qualification of staff, infrastructure and organization. Many would like to be recognized, “to work quietly”, but they find it difficult, they do not know how to do it or they have tried and the bureaucracy has discouraged them in a first attempt. 
Just in March 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic exploded in the world and we all saw the death and abandonment in which geriatric elders lived in developed countries, such as Spain, the Home of Christ alliance, AFP Habitat and Vinson Consulting, decided not to open the competition to qualify for the “Think big 2020s” social innovation fund and allocate that budget and energy to support long-term establishments of vulnerable adults operating irregular on Puente Alto. 
Maria Laura Muñoz Apiolaza
Thus, for much of last year, a pilot experience was developed in 18 homes that house 218 people in one of the most populous communes in Chile. The aim was to provide them with tools, inputs and training so that they could regularize their situation and be formally recognized, which will allow them to better serve the older adults they host. In addition, the initiative seeks to serve as a benchmark so that the largest number of between 900 and 3 thousand long-stay residences that exist in Chile and do not comply with what the D14 requires, manage to regularize their situation. This would benefit some 10,000 elderly and vulnerable people across the country. 
“Paula”, Maria Laura’s ELEAM, is one of two who are about to achieve formalization and has made significant progress. The other is the “Orfelina” Home, named after the deceased mother of its sustainer, Rosa González Arenas (64). In addition to the physical proximity – “Paula” and “Orfelina” are about three blocks away, both near the Plaza de Puente Alto –, its owners have a lot in common. The two are older women, with a life dedicated to the care of others, with knowledge of nursing and with a lot of age to face adversity and get their children forward. Rosa, alone, as head of household in charge of 4 sons, and Maria Laura, now a widow, against the resistance of a sexist husband who never celebrated her accomplishments. He tells us: 
-We were married 40 years; I’ve been a widow for 7 years. He never believed in me. I didn’t value my work. I think if I were alive, I wouldn’t recognize what I achieved with the help of “Think Big Ones”: formalize the residence. He wanted me to just own the house, that’s all. He was very sexist, very old-fashioned. I was just able to study for TEN when the girls were big, but I always worked at the hospital. They, my daughters, paid for my courses, and I kept working and learning, perfecting myself. 
She herself receives a basic pension of 68 thousand pesos per month and her residents “pay with her basic pension plus a surplus put by each other’s family. With that, I feed them, I bathe them, I take care of them, I pay the lease of the house. I am very interested in working quietly, having regularized residency and having support, that everything is legal and allows me to access help from the Senama and the Health Service so that they, the residents, are better off.” 
He says he left looking after his granny, then his dad, and then his mom. “I’ve always been moved by how fragile we all get with age. When older adults arrive many come very badly, but encourages to see that, with care and care, there are improvements in their condition. I like to take care of them, give them away, shave them and dye their hair. Let them look and feel good. Most come here through the social worker of the Hospital Sotero del Río. Today only 4 of the 7 who live here have a relative worried about them. I have a lady, who is terminally ill because of cancer. She’s the sister of a friend of my son-in-law’s. That’s the profile of the people who live here.” 
Commercial engineer Andrey Guajardo, from Vinton Consulting, a member of the project coordinator team, says he has learned a lot in these months of work, both from those who are cared for and cared for. It says: “Most people who have these residences do not seek to enrich themselves; they have a real social vocation. They do a huge job and earn at most 500 lucas a month. It’s not a business at all; they are the solution to a problem for many families who cannot have a parent or an older grandfather with them and require a place where they are welcomed and cared for. That’s why supporting homes and teaching them efficient management is so important. There are some establishments with a lot of potential to achieve their formalization. Our expectations are to achieve with them a packaged and orderly recipe, which we can then replicate in other communes and that is a model of intervention, that recognizes the reality of each ELEAM and generates concrete benefits for the older adults who live in them”. 
Rosa González Arenas
-What are the benefits of formalization?
-Access to public funds, Senama subsidies, training, network links. When we left, the plan was for formal ELIMs, but we realized that it is much more beneficial to help informals regularize.
From caring for guaguas to caring for the elderly
The “Orfelina” Home has existed for 8 years. It is a house of bright floors and a garden where the leaves of the plants shine brighter than the tiles. immaculate. In the midst of neatness, Rosa González, her owner, the other benefited from the support of Piensa en Grandes and about to be officialized, says: 
“We started this, when my mom, Orfelina Arenas, died. This was her house, which we had in rent, because she lived with me. He died at 96. Carmen’s daughter-in-law, my sister and partner in this, was the one who had the job of using the house to install an ELEAM. We are 8 brothers and, thank God, we had no problem. Everyone told us to put him forward. So we build more bathrooms, widen the doors. We fixed everything and left with 9 older adults, then expanded to receive 12. Then we built two more pieces and got to 18. For 8 years, the business has been mine and Carmen’s.
–What knowledge did you have to take care of the elderly?

“I worked 33 years in the Sotero del Río, so, at first, we started tending to the parents of my colleagues at the Hospital, who had no way of taking care of their elders. I’ve been TEN all my life. My original workplace was motherhood, I had roles in the ward as an arsenalr. The truth is, I was moving around a lot. Because of the need to get my four children forward, I “arsenald” anywhere. The doctors knew me and recommended me for private clinics. I became well known. Today my eldest son is 43 and the youngest 32, both are professionals. The father was totally absent, I pulled them out on my own.  
It is curious that from working in motherhood, at the beginning of life, now do it with people who are at the end of existence. What reflection does this fact arouse you?
“We took care of my mom and this home is a tribute to her, my old lady. It’s hard, intense, highly sacrificed work. No one who hasn’t been near an unsytly older adult imagines what it’s like. We have to feed him, move him, move him, bathe him, wash him. It’s much more delicate than taking over a guagua. Extreme care is required. Sometimes you take their hands and the capillary veins immediately break and their skin is purple. You have to have a lot of handling. No one imagines, for example, what it’s like to feed an older adult with Alzheimer’s. It can be a test of patience, a feat. You learn a lot from them, much more than from a guagua. Somehow, they’re trying you all day. In their moments of conscience, they tell you surprising questions. 
Rosa works with 6 people, to which her sister Carmen is added. “We are 8 to care for 13 adults mayyou are charged 350 thousand pesos per month, and there are two “whose families do not pay. They are people who speak nice but very blackmail, and here I have their relatives, well treated, just like the rest. I can’t throw them out,” says Rosa, who explains, so it means moving on to formality.
“For me to achieve regularization is to fulfill a dream. I presented my papers three years ago and was rejected: I lacked bathrooms, the kitchen was not suitable, I needed more space for the prostrate people. Then I didn’t qualify. I lacked things to meet the demands, some of them being very silly and useless, like having a candleper per resident, when most of my residents can’t manipulate a candle next to their bed. It is much more useful for auxiliaries to manage drawers with their personal items. Suddenly, they focus on meaningless things. For me the focus to function must be that they have a good bed, that they are neat, in a warm and quiet place, that their clothes are clean and tidy, that they love them and treat them with love and dignity.  
How does lawyer Octavio Vergara, director of Senama, evaluate this pilot experience developed at Puente Alto? We asked him and this he replied: “The objective of this pilot, who is working with a lot of participation from the municipality, is to be able to establish an accompanying strategy for the regularization process. We are very excited because as a product of this learning we will be able to take this project on a larger scale throughout Chile”.
The work, both in the “Paula” Home and in the “Orfelina” Home, went through the seven-dimensional assessment: residents, identifying their age, levels of dependence, relationship with their families and significant figures, medical information, among other aspects; the infrastructure and equipment of the houses where they operate, which means determining the number of square meters per resident, compliance with regulations, clinical equipment and the quality of existing spaces; networking with other public and private actors; administrative management; organizational management and management of elder care, including food, hygiene, drug administration and a customized development plan for each, among other aspects. Everything that the endearing “Agent Topo” of the documentary filmmaker Maite Alberdi cared about, although the home of the town of El Monte, where the film was recorded, was regularized. 
The seventh dimension that the pilot of Piensa en Grandes deals with is the one that has to do with the management of the pandemic, that, although there is a vaccine, today they are all with their two doses set and some of the residents have even survived COVID-19, which gives them immunity, remains a critical issue. 
Rosa expresses it like this: 
“Think of Greats was a blessing, especially now, in pandemics, which has made everything more difficult. May the help of CESFAM (Family Health Centers), which in normal times works very well, be made less regular. We are served by CESFAM San Jerónimo and Alejandro del Río de Puente Alto and, until before the pandemic, we had a doctor, with healings, with all kinds of assistance, but COVID-19 turned everything upside down. We spent three months in total quarantine, the ones that were very hard. We should have been locked up, put it all aside. I came to live here myself. I was infected with 10 residents, who I had to isolate. In short, in particular, Piensa en Grandes made me think big of my company. I realize that you are eligible for help, that there are support options. I was closed to that. Now I know that being regularized, I am eligible for benefits, which is good for me, but especially for them. 

Original source in Spanish

Related Posts

Add Comment