The Active Ageing and Community Care Support Services The Corporate Services Section
Josef Delicata Assistant Director (Sapport Services) AACC
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s in all other entities the ‘Support Services’ or ‘Corporate Services’ Section incorporates the usual sections such as the Administration, Human Resources, Finance, Salaries/Payroll, Procurement, Transport etc. Therefore, for this article, so as not to repeat what was already written in similar articles, I decided to focus on two particular sections which are unique to the Active Aging & Community Care Support Services Section. These are The Contributions Section and the Project & Estate Management Section. The Contributions Section The Contributions section is situated at St.Venera and comprises of five staff. Residents in state funded homes who are not ‘highly dependent’ and classified as class 1 residents contribute 60% of their net income of the previous year and 60% of their pension rate of the current year for their stay in the home (as regulated in L.N. 259 of 2004). A budget measure introduced in 2018 gave the right to clients who return the keys of their house of residence to the Housing Authority to qualify for a further deduction of 20% in their payment rate and pay 40% instead of 60%. The Contributions Section is tasked with all the workings and revisions carried out to determine the rate the client pays. They work closely on daily basis with the Department of Social Policy, mainly the IMU and Pensions sections, to obtain the necessary income data to carry out the assessment. Once
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ready, they forward their workings to the ‘Pensions Section’ to carry out the necessary deductions. In cases where the payment rate exceeds the pension rate such as clients in receipt of a foreign pension and not in receipt of a Maltese pension, the necessary arrangements are carried out so that the client pays directly the Welfare committee, if residing in a government home, or if the accounts section at AACC is making use of a PPP bed. The Contributions Section is also responsible to send the Annual Declarations Form to all residents to complete and return so that revisions are carried out reflecting any changes in the income of the client. Finally, it is worth mentioning that the Contributions Section also provides a one-to-one customer care service (by appointment) for those clients or their relatives who need individual assistance. Project & Estate Management Section A unique service that the Project & Estate Management Section manages is the Handyman Section. A service that AACC offers is small maintenance work in elderly people’s residences. Since AACC is also the entity that manages the Government’s Old People’s Homes, the Day Centres for the elderly and the Night Shelters for the elderly, one of the Project & Estate Management Section’s tasks is the upkeep and maintenance of these buildings. Finally, the Project & Estate Management Section also spearheads a variety of new projects such as building of new elderly homes, the installation of nurse calls in our nursing homes and other minor projects such as hair salons in elderly homes. It is a privilege to have the opportunity to work as an Assistant Director: Support Services as it gives me a challenging and rewarding work experience.
