The “Help at Home” program in Greece provides assistance to those of our fellow citizens who need it. It is aimed at elderly people who are not fully independent, people with mobility problems and people with special needs, with priority being given to those who live alone or who do not have full family care or whose income does not allow them to secure the services needed to improve their quality of life.
Launched as a pilot project in 1998, the program has since grown seamlessly, elevating support for vulnerable groups to the pinnacle of community outreach. Fully aware of the situation in an urban center with emerging successive crises, both economic and social, the integrated provision of primary health care is the main objective of the program.
Day by day, we improve the quality of life of all those who feel weak and isolated, accompanying them with systematic and organized social care by trained personnel, in order to remedy the significant care deficits resulting from inadequate conditions related either to the absence of a supportive family environment or to various types of disabilities (motor, sensory, mental, cognitive).
The benefits of the program include:
- Individual counseling and psychological support
- Assistance to beneficiaries in dealing with services for obtaining pensions, allowances, other benefits such as food, issuance of disability certificate by KEPA
- Nursing care, taking vital signs, personal hygiene, wound care
- Prescription, delivery of medications from pharmacies and EOPYY pharmacies
- Making appointments, accompanying and transporting to and from hospitals and examination centers
- Household cleaning
- Purchase of products
- Taking care of external affairs, such as paying utility bills
- Transportation and delivery of free food packages
- Taking walks
- Involving the elderly in friendship clubs
Health care at home is part of the continuous heath care, where health services are provided to individuals and families at the place of their residence, aiming at the promotion and/or conservation of health, rehabilitation or optimization of the level of independence and quality of life. The need for home health care is continuously increasing in our days.
Reasons for the development of Health Care at Home are :
- the more effective, efficient and appropriate provision of care to individuals in need for such services in the place they live
- the decongestion of hospital beds
- the ever increasing costs of hospital care
Home Health Care in most countries is synonymous to Home Nursing, which is internationally considered to be a service that is organised and provided mainly by nurses. Nursing services provided at home is not a new development in Greece. Limited home nursing services had been provided even before it became a recognised necessity as well as an object of study by lawmakers (N1397/83).
There are three professions in Greece that are mainly involved in the provision of community nursing services. These are general nurses, health visitors, and midwives.
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