The Municipality of Milan, at the end of the budget, had to make painful choices and cuts. Among these, welfare resources are no exception and in particular those who have been supporting projects for the social, occupational and housing reintegration of people with mental illness for years.
“We understand the situation,” he says Don Virginia Colmegnawho from 1993 to 2003 was director of Caritas Ambrosiana and since 2002 is president of House of Charity Foundation “Angelo Abriani”, an institution wanted by the then Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini.
The cuts impact both on the Social Fund that the Municipality makes available to the Psychosocial Centers – managed by the Milanese Mental Health Departments to carry out work placements and for subsidies to citizens in particular economic difficulties – and on the territorial projects owned by the Health Departments Mental Milanese and often managed in collaboration with Third Sector entities.
«We are talking about particularly useful and innovative projects which arise from the many years of experience which people with mental illness have benefited from, such as Let’s try it together, a project born in 2000, promoted and financed by the Department of Social and Housing Policies of the Municipality of Milan and implemented in agreement with the Department of Mental Health and Addiction of the ASST Fatebenefratelli – Sacco. The project starts from a conviction: mental suffering is prolific where a social periphery overlaps the urban periphery. Where bonds are labile, causing isolation and closure. Easing this suffering means recreating connections and promoting exchange and knowledge between people and between formal and informal subjects of the territory.
«Many citizens – explain from La Casa della Carità – in these days, are receiving communication of the interruption of their inclusion project or of the drastic reduction of the resources available. At the same time, even the operators who have been engaged on the various interventions since the beginning of the year do not know if they will see their work financially recognized. Work which, despite the non-renewal of the agreements in place and the continuous postponements of the decisions regarding the continuation of the interventions in progress, has never been interrupted in respect of the dignity and needs of the patients and the professional ethics of the operators».
The Casa della Carità has always been involved in the field of mental sufferingstarting from the assumption that mental illness is not a disease to be stigmatized but a mental health issue that affects everyone and following the path indicated by Franco Basaglia: that of deinstitutionalization.
«The hope – concludes Don Virginio Colmegna – is that the Municipal Administration will be able to immediately realize the seriousness of this choice and be able, already from the imminent budget adjustment in June, to find the necessary resources to restart the projects and guarantee the economic resources of the Social Fund.
Equally important is restarting a process of co-programming between the Municipality of Milan, the Departments of Mental Health and the Third Sector Bodies which puts the issue of mental discomfort back at the center of the city debate which in recent years, also following the pandemic and the economic crisis, has significantly changed and worsened. The Milanese Coordination of the Third Sector on Mental Healthe- is made up of more than thirty private social entities – social cooperatives, foundations, family and user associations. and CGIL and UIL express these concerns also following the numerous requests for support received in recent months. Coordination is present, with its representatives, in the Permanent Table on Mental Health of the municipality of Milan, in the Mental Health Coordination Body of the ATS Metropolitan City of Milan and in the Milanese Forum of the Third Sector.
They joined the call:
– Zuccheribelli Association
– Filo di Arianna scs onlus
– Art UP APS Art and Health Facilitators
– URASAM
– A&I social cooperative
– Amalthea social cooperative
– CREATE Soc.Coop.Soc
– The Fabbrica di Olinda non-profit social cooperative society
– Bertini Malgarini Foundation
– Differently ODV
– Change the non-profit route
– APS Contact Association for the promotion of natural social networks
– Jacob’s tree
– The garden of aromas
– Association Fare Together
– Fraternity and Friendship
– Fondazione Lighea
– AIEMm Association
Opening photo, Don Virginio Colmegna