by Salvatore Poidomani
28 NOV –
Dear Director,
Also this year social workers with the participation of SUNAS were significantly present at the 17th Forum Risk Management in Healthcare in Arezzo. The theme chosen in this edition concerned the “New organizational models in territorial healthcare after the approval of the DM77, the role of the Professional Social Service: the organizational areas and contractual opportunities.
The contributions and ideas proposed by the speakers and the planned interventions that animated the work and the debate were highly qualified and appreciated. The following attended: D. Manferoce Director of the IRIS Socialia Study Centre, R. Barone President CROAS ToscanaS. Proiaformer Director of the Ministry of Health and member of the Scientific Committee of the Forum, L. Brizzi Director of the Health Society of the Etruscan Valleys, S. Where Coord. USCA I IV ASSL Sassari, L. Perugini Coord. Vercelli Company Professional Social Service, D. Pellitta SN and Resp. SUNAS Contracting Health, M. Fiorentino Social service ASL Brindisi, C. Mongelli Resp. Social Service Staff Area Strategic Dir. ASL Bari, E. Viligiardi Department Non Self-sufficiency and Disability Social Service US North West Tuscany.
During the debate, the interventions of Dr. Luca Fazio, Director of the Primary Care Department and social-health integration and of Dr. Cesare Ferrari, Director of the Marsala Health District, both of the ASP Trapani and Dr. Roberta were particularly welcome Caldesi, Dir. Colline dell’Albegna area, who, each starting from their own experience, underlined the fundamental role of social workers who operate within the health sector through interventions and professional services capable of guaranteeing a global care of people who turn to services and who experience particular situations of difficulty and fragility, thus contributing to real processes of social and health integration.
At the center of the comparison are the processes of remodeling the health system and the new organizational structures with which it will compete in the near future, starting with the application of Ministerial Decree 77/2022, with respect to which it is necessary to create synergies and strategies that bring the health system into harmony and the social one, until today still close but divided. A difficult coexistence that recalls the need to find the path of integration not only to solve the serious critical issues and shortcomings, already present in the past and now aggravated by the pandemic and the consequences of the Russia-Ukraine war, but also to help stem the crumbling of those universal rights, for many no longer enforceable, also recovering the equity of access to services, which over the years has been reduced compromising the right to health and well-being, today no longer attributable only to illness and treatment but rather to care throughout the life span of the person and of the entire community.
The Professional Social Service claims its part and its specific function in the construction of programming and planning strategies of social-health policies for which it is necessary to affirm a role of shared governance and a new operation in organizational models within a health system which must increasingly be characterized as a health system, which finally achieves the still uncompleted integration between health and social care.
Today SUNAS, the only Professional Union of social workers, proposes a specific and defined organizational model for the Social Health Service capable of interfacing with that of the territories, a Service which must be recognized as having a new centrality in terms of functions and responsibilities, through a its specific structuring, also proceeding with the establishment of the homologous management. The profession of the Social Assistant, today recognized in its social and health role also at a regulatory and contractual level and in the overall process of change underway, can help promote a qualitative leap precisely in those services with high social and health integration in the public and private sectors , increasingly modulated on the needs of citizens, increasingly closely connected to the achievement of a state of global well-being of the person and the community.
The Union therefore reiterates the opportunity to promote a greater valorisation of social assistant professionals, a path that must be undertaken together with the other professional figures present in health care, primarily doctors and nurses.
In this regard, a reminder should be made of the need to make the best use of the resources allocated to healthcare, health and social issues, in particular those provided for by the PNRR (Missions 5 and 6) which must not only concern investments and measures for new structures and to strengthen the assistance networks but also to enhance the staffing endowments through new hires, also investing in personnel and professionalism, eliminating situations of precariousness that cannot guarantee quality services. For social workers, a standard should be defined which also provides for the presence of a professional for every 5,000 inhabitants in health care, as in the municipalities.
Salvatore Poitomorrow
SUNAS General Secretary
November 28, 2022
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