For 18 years alongside the vulnerable. The STacco service comes of age and confirms its importance in supporting the elderly, disabled and sick. The objective is stated: to transport and accompany elderly and / or disabled people from their homes to hospitals. In the province of Belluno, given its considerable territorial extension, there is a constant need for it. And the numbers testify: in 2019, the year before Covid, the service covered something like 506,629 kilometers, for 14,033 trips and 1,936 users; 380 volunteers employed, which in 2022 fell to 254.
STAcco is a transport project with a social purpose, carried out throughout the Belluno area and the network has 23 associations located throughout the province. But like almost all the realities that act in the field of solidarity, there is a problem to be solved: there is a lack of volunteers. So on Saturday 19 November in Belluno a meeting is scheduled to talk about the STacco service and its future.
Important numbers
Over 360 thousand km traveled in this 2022, 9,554 trips and a number of users served equal to 1,864 with 508 volunteers involved for an hourly commitment of 17,426 hours of work. Looking at the last five years, on average 500,000 km have been traveled per year, with a decline in the two-year period marked by the pandemic. In any case, even during the period marked by Covid, transport did not stop (207,637 km traveled in 2020, 296,728 in 2021), with all the difficulties of the case. Taking a proportion between the data of the two-year period 2020-21 and the previous years, we can see an increase in the hourly commitment of volunteers, an increase in the kilometers traveled, testifying that the performance of services is recovering, but at the same time a decrease in volunteers. .
«The trend highlights the phenomenon that the commitment in terms of time has increased for the volunteers who remained in service. At the same time, the decrease in volunteers, linked above all to the pandemic, has an impacting effect on the transport service, especially in the mountainous areas of the province, which risks running out of human resources to guarantee the service »explains President Gianluca Corsetti. “As regards the type of service, it can be said that practically all transport is carried out from the home of citizens to hospitals or general practitioners (in 2022 the percentage is 98%)”.
Fewer and fewer volunteers
The pandemic in the sphere of voluntary work and specifically in transport has had a particular impact. Corsetti clarifies: «The situation of the volunteers is affected by difficulties in generational change, retirement age, depopulation. With the pandemic, then, many volunteers have decided not to make themselves available, also for a perceived fear of getting sick and because the estimated average age of the volunteers is 70 years. Today we find ourselves, for most of the associative realities, with a significant decrease in volunteers and with the increasing difficulty of finding human resources. The post-pandemic period also suffers from the change in organization and access to hospital services, which is more penalizing especially in terms of distances and hours for family members busy at work, which has led to an increase in requests ».
A bit of history
In 2004 the then Ulss 1 of Belluno identified the lead body of the project in the Committee of Understanding. After the first experimental year, financed with a regional fund, it was decided to extend the service to the territory of the then Ulss 2 of Feltre. Since then, the growth of services has been progressive and constant. From the very beginning STAcco has been able to take advantage of the support from the then CSV Belluno for the planning and reporting phase of the activities. The types are divided into on-call transport (to medical, socio-health, assistance facilities) and scheduled (to medical, socio-health facilities for cycles of therapies, to workplaces, schools, etc.). Funding comes from the Veneto Region (110 thousand euros starting from 2014 plus a special contribution of 15 thousand euros in 2021) and from the Conferences of Mayors of the provincial Ulss, today Committees of Mayors of the Ulss 1 (about 47 thousand a year starting from 2016).
The prospects
«The Committee of Understanding can undertake, in order to increase the number of volunteers, in promoting actions and tools to raise awareness and meetings in the realities not covered by the service. Furthermore, we will undertake to formulate a regulation that clearly defines the tasks of the volunteers and the limits of their intervention so that it also becomes a kind of “quality certificate”. Finally, we will expand the training offer addressed to all volunteers, from privacy to safe driving first aid courses, etc. The president anticipates. “We ask the institutions for support to facilitate access to outpatient services taking into account the distances, the age of the users and also the costs, in economic and temporal terms, for associations and volunteers, for example in assigning the timetables of the visits, as well as the continuation of collaboration and support ».
The appointment
The celebratory meeting of the STAcco project (Transport and accompaniment service) in the province of Belluno will be held on Saturday 19 November at 3 pm in Piazza Duomo. The project is the result of twenty years of collaboration between the Committee of Understanding, in its capacity as representative and coordinator of the territory, and the voluntary associations involved. Gianluca Corsetti, president of the Committee of Understanding, the representative of the Committee for STAcco Sisto Da Roit and other representatives and volunteers who allow the project to be carried out will be present; the meeting, as well as a moment of celebration, will also be an opportunity for a comparison of pre and post pandemic data and for a discussion on the state of the art and any problems.