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Community care centers opened in Bar and Bijelo Polje

Red Cross of Montenegro opened Community care centers for older people and informal caregivers in Bar and Bijelo Polje

Community care centers offer the following services: social and health protection counselling, home care, preventive home visits, volunteers’ support, innovative program for slowing down dementia and support for informal caregivers.

„I am very pleased that we initiated a new format of service for older people. Some of the services that will be provided within the Community care center relate to preventive visits by caseworkers and nurses to older people in rural areas, innovative program for slowing down the dementia, social and health protection counselling, support for informal caregivers. Persons who are interested in these services may call, send an email or come directly to the Community center. The Center is opened every working day from 7AM to 3PM“– said Zorica Crnčević, Secretary of the Local Red Cross branch Bar.

Community care center in Bijelo Polje, hosted by the local Red Cross branch Bijelo Polje, was officially opened by the Secretary of the Local Red Cross branch, Zoran Rudić, who said: „Community care center is an innovative and unique approach of providing services to older people and their informal caregivers, which is based on integrated social and health protection services. At the same time, the Center is the link between the beneficiaries and institutions in charge for exercising the right in in these areas. The main goal of the services provided by this

Center is to enable older people to stay as long as possible in their natural environment, with dignity and secured quality of life. “

„Older people are, by their nature, one of the most vulnerable groups in the society, especially with Covid 19 pandemic. Loneliness, poor health condition and poverty are some of the biggest problems they face. Community care centers will specifically tackle these needs of older people”, said Jelena Dubak, Secretary General of the Red Cross of Montenegro, who officially opened the centers.

State secretary for Public Health in the Ministry of Health, Anka Vukićević, said „through multisector cooperation, the Community care centers, that will engage case workers, nurses, professional home helpers, will enable the beneficiaries to stay at their homes, in a familiar environment but also to spend part of the day in a Center. Certainly, Ministry of Health will be happy to be participate in similar projects in the future. “

Innovative program for dementia that is implemented in the Center relates to providing support to older people who have cognitive problems and dementia. The program consists of a phone app installed on tablet device and by using the app, further cognitive decay is slowed down. The app consists of sets of tasks such as responding to given questions, puzzles, filing in the images with missing parts, repeating the versus of a song, etc. The app is used for the first time in Montenegro and in the Balkans in general. Austrian Digitaal life GmbH agency will adapt the app to our language.

Funds for Community Care centers in Bar and Bijelo Polje for the next two years are provided with the support of EU and Austrian Development Agency, within the EU Regional project „Innovative support services for older people in the community “, that the Red Cross of Montenegro implement in partnership with the Ministry of Health and the Austrian Red Cross.