Center for Social Protection of Pensioners: “We work for people!”
Sometimes, having lived up to a venerable age, elderly people are faced with the problem of loneliness. In urgent need of care and support, they do not know where to turn for help, and do not imagine that there are centers in their city for the provision of social services for senior lonely citizens and people with disabilities.
Social service centers for the population are operating in all cities of Turkmenistan. ORIENT correspondents visited a similar institution located in Ashgabat. Ashgabat branch director Annagul Mamiyeva told about services that are provided to lonely pensioners and people in need of special care.
- Our organization has been operating since the 90s. Today there are more than five hundred people on its list. The Center has a day patient facility where pensioners are provided with first aid and hot food. But at the moment, facility visitors are temporarily served at home. Social workers visit their care recipients twice a week to help with house cleaning, fulfill their requests for paying utility bills, and do much more. We work for people and try to ensure that our care recipients lack nothing.
One social worker serves 16 to 20 care recipients, who are provided with a range of support, including household, sanitary and hygienic services. Visiting pensioners in the morning, social workers go for the affairs of care recipients. Someone asks to go to the pharmacy for medicines, someone needs to get a pension or buy goods in a store. Sometimes our workers are asked to just help an elderly person go down to a yard to sit on a bench.
- Pensioners and lonely people are happy with any help. It also happens that they simply have no one to talk to, and they are in urgent need of communication and moral support, Annagul Mamiyeva says. - There is a library and hobby groups at our Center, where pensioners get to know each other, make friends, and sometimes even get married. Naive and defenseless, like children, old people get very used to us. They often call social workers themselves, especially when they are boring.
Pensioners together celebrate all important occasions and holidays, and those whose physical abilities do not allow them to attend events are not overlooked, since social workers deliver treats to their homes. Thanks to sponsorship, the elderly people and persons with disabilities receive gifts and have the opportunity to visit a hairdresser for free.
However, help is never much. The Social Service Center is always glad for volunteer and financial support from benefactors.
The necessary package of documents has to be collected to become a care recipient at a social service institution. But sometimes just a call to the Center is enough, and representatives of a public organization will help collect all the necessary papers.
More detailed information can be obtained at the Center for the provision of social services to senior lonely citizens and people with disabilities or by calling: +99312 93-06-13; 93-27-36.
