{"id":23442,"date":"2015-08-25T10:31:38","date_gmt":"2015-08-25T13:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=23442"},"modified":"2016-06-04T23:26:42","modified_gmt":"2016-06-05T02:26:42","slug":"elderly-day-care-center-expands-into-homes-by-offering-home-based-care-course-in-city-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=23442","title":{"rendered":"Elderly Day Care Center Expands into Homes by Offering Home-Based Care Course in City of God"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas<\/a><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Since its inception in 1991, Casa de Santa Ana<\/a>\u00a0has pioneered the delivery of healthcare and physical therapy to elderly residents in Cidade de Deus (City of God<\/a>). Located in the heart of one of Rio\u2019s biggest West Zone<\/a> favelas and just 5km from the\u00a0site of the Olympic Park<\/a>\u00a0in Barra da Tijuca<\/a>, Casa de Santa Ana is a multipurpose care facility specializing in elderly health and wellbeing. Until recently, Casa de Santa Ana focused on and offered services solely to Cidade de Deus’\u00a0aging population. This changed in 2009 with the innovative idea to expand\u00a0resources and local expertise through education and training. Today, Casa de Santa Ana has offered its Senior Caregiver course to over 500 young adults, while also combating the chronic shortage of doctors and nurses that plagues Brazil\u2019s poorly funded public healthcare<\/a> system.<\/p>\n

\"Casa<\/a>
\n<\/a>Maria de Lourdes Braz, founder of Casa de Santa Ana, is no stranger to taking initiative and addressing the needs of communities. \u201cPeople often overlook the elderly and tend to be more generous toward children and the \u2018next generation,\u201d Lourdes explains. \u201cIt isn\u2019t difficult to get funding and sympathy for children\u2019s programs, schools, and day care centers\u2014but rarely do people consider supporting Brazil\u2019s growing elderly population.\u201d Lourdes founded Casa de Santa Ana in 1991 along the lines\u00a0of a cr\u00e8che\u2014typically a children\u2019s day care\u2014but applied the same premise and amenities to fit the needs of the community’s aging population. Casa de Santa Ana provides proper physical therapy, exercise and gymnastics, nutritious meals, and music engagement through weekly percussion classes, organic gardening, and ballet classes four days a week for both children and seniors. Lourdes receives funding for this innovative model, the first in all of Brazil, and continues to offer these services for free to community members. She has revolutionized the model of caring for the elderly, arguing\u00a0\u201cpeople are healthier, happier, and live longer if they remain in their community and have the continued support of their family and friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Casa de Santa Ana opens its doors to 15 seniors on a weekly basis for the Day Care Center. It also hosts 100 elderly residents for specific activities such as physical therapy, pranic healing, senior gymnastics, shiatsu, ballet, percussion classes, and the region\u2019s sole treatment center for venous leg ulcers, a painful recurring wound that many elderly patients get from venous hypertension. Casa de Santa Ana has eight full-time local staff, innumerable volunteers, and over 100 girls of all ages who take ballet classes alongside the seniors.<\/p>\n

\"Maria<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the best, and initially unintended, parts of Casa de Santa Ana is the cross-generational learning that takes place,\u201d says Lourdes. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing to see children gain respect for the elderly, and interact with care rather than pity. It\u2019s a way of showing kids every day that they too will get old, and that no one deserves to be treated as anything less than human.\u201d<\/p>\n

The organization\u00a0started offering dance classes to its daily residents eight years ago, when Cristina Aleixo, a passionate and dedicated ballerina, approached Lourdes after a car accident ended her professional aspirations as a dancer. \u201cCristina is still an unbelievable ballerina\u2014she could be teaching private lessons in Zona Sul, but instead she comes here every day and shares her talent and passion for dance with the girls,\u201d Rodrigo Braz Vieira, Lourde\u2019s son, explains. Today, girls and women aged 4-74 participate in free, mixed-age ballet classes in the upstairs studio of Casa de Santa Ana. Cristina’s talent and respect for the girls have helped three of her ballet students receive full scholarships to train at the Municipal Theater in Rio as part of Brazil\u2019s National Ballet. She is currently training several others for this same prestigious opportunity.<\/p>\n

\"Casa<\/a><\/p>\n

The Senior Caregiver course is the newest addition to Casa de Santa Ana. Lourdes says\u00a0the idea for the course took shape due to the deficit in healthcare workers<\/a>. Residents in favelas all over Rio de Janeiro either wait long hours at a local public clinic or travel far distances to see a physician. Furthermore, Rodrigo\u00a0points out that almost no public health center<\/a> in Rio de Janeiro offers physical therapy, a critical component for healthy aging. This is the reality for almost all low-income Brazilians who can\u2019t afford private healthcare providers.<\/p>\n

Currently financed through grants from the Brazil Foundation, Sextant Publishers, and several engineering companies, Casa de Santa Ana’s\u00a0state-of-the-art 40-hour series of classes is open to anyone, completely free of charge. The classes are taught by health professionals and cover basic physical therapy, first aid, general elderly care, and offer psychological and emotional guidance. Participants receive an\u00a0accredited certificate upon completing\u00a0the course.<\/p>\n

Over 500 people from Cidade de Deus and other nearby communities in Rio\u2019s West Zone have participated in the course since its creation in 2009. Many have gone on to receive jobs in local care centers or in private homes in affluent neighborhoods like\u00a0Barra da Tijuca, Leblon, Ipanema, Copacabana, and other parts of the South Zone<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Cidade<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWithin just one week after the first course was offered, 15 of the 60 participants had jobs,\u201d Rodrigo recounts. \u201cOur intentions are to meet the demand for home-based care, while also providing an important and crucial trade to people who often can\u2019t afford education in medical care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Underscoring all the organization’s activities is a positive\u00a0vision for what aging should and can look like: \u201cPrevention is key when caring for elderly patients,\u201d Lourdes says. \u201cJust because it\u2019s the end of one\u2019s life doesn\u2019t mean it has to be boring, passionless, and neglected.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas Since its inception in 1991, Casa de Santa Ana\u00a0has pioneered the delivery of healthcare and physical therapy to elderly residents in Cidade de Deus (City of God). Located in the heart […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":23455,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1290,1271,329,1329],"tags":[231,258,364,910,417,107,129,1292,1403,21],"writer":[1664],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-23442","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-civilsociety","8":"category-favelaqualities","9":"category-solutions","10":"category-by-international-observers","11":"tag-city-of-god","12":"tag-community-solution","13":"tag-community-based-organization-cbo","14":"tag-creative-organizing","15":"tag-elderly","16":"tag-health","17":"tag-leadership","18":"tag-organizing","19":"tag-solution","20":"tag-west-zone","21":"writer-julia-jones"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23442"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=23442"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=23442"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=23442"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=23442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}