President Ciulla: “personal stabilization is essential to ensure quality and continuity of services”
Yesterday Giuseppe Ciulla, regional president of the Order of Social Workers of Sicily together with the Croas councilor Davide Nicolosi was heard at the Municipality of Catania during a joint videoconference session of the Ninth council commission with delegation to Personnel and the Eighth with delegation to social services.
At the center of the session was the theme of social services and the personnel necessary to ensure the minimum standards of assistance in the area.
The two Commissions chaired by Councilors Simona Latino and Melania Miraglia asked for clarification on the areas in which social workers operate on behalf of the Municipality’s Department of Social Services. The councilor for Social Inclusion and Family, Bruno Brucchieri, and the trade union representatives of CGIL and CISL were also invited and took part: Leandro Manna, provincial secretary of FP Cgil and Danilo Sottile, General Secretary of CISL FP.
“Social workers – said President Ciulla – operate in all areas of social hardship: both in terms of economic hardship and new poverty and in relation to disabilities, protection of women and minors, chronic pathologies, addictions, social inclusion, dispersion scholastic, social rehabilitation. Spheres of intervention that concern families but also society as a whole. To provide effective responses it is necessary to have motivated, stabilized and non-temporary staff who can also guarantee continuity for the users with whom they deal. It is a prerequisite of quantity but above all of quality for Social Services. The Municipality of Catania has the resources to stabilize the 5 eligible social workers or hire other staff on a permanent basis in accordance with the provisions of law 178/2020 which is provided with ad hoc funding, thus guaranteeing its citizens efficient and effective services in the short term, medium and long term. A request that does not only come from the Order and our professionals but which is required by law. Law 178/2020 (Budget Law for 2021) introduced an essential level of social assistance benefits defined by one operator for every 5,000 inhabitants and a further service objective defined by one operator for every 4,000 inhabitants. It is essential to go in this direction.”
Councilor Davide Nicolosi, president of the Commission for the Protection of Croas Sicily, pointed out that “based on 178/2020 the Municipality of Catania should have at least 60 permanent social workers on staff and that it would be desirable as well as proceeding with the stabilization of the staff precarious worker who has acquired the right to be employed, announce competitions to recruit new professionals”.
During the session, presidents Latino and Miraglia underlined the “humanistic dimension” of the profession of social workers which best represents the social, cultural, well-being, protection and guarantee mandate of the community which is the bearer of requests and needs, focusing on the need to avoid a continuous turnover, harmful for the users, but also for the Municipality itself which should have an adequate number of social workers in its organization chart and provide for the stabilization in particular of five temporary social workers, towards which it had been taken a commitment on the part of the Administration jointly with the Unions.
The two Commission Presidents will take the opportunity with the Commissions so that, during the work of the DUP and the next Budget, there is the hope that the resources will be found to stabilize these five social workers as well.
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