Many areas of the Oise already join the local mutual aid platform “I help here Oise”: Compiégnois, Picardie verte, Noyonnais, Aire Cantilienne… All that was missing was almost the city-prefecture, Beauvais. It will be done this Monday, July 1, the launch date of “Beauvais mutual aid”.
With this new system, the city sets itself the objective of fight against the isolation of the elderly and enable them to be more mobile.Many are estranged from their families because children sometimes go far away, families are dispersed or spouses die.“, explains Franck Pia, the mayor of Beauvais.
The Beauvais Entraide platform will thus connect isolated seniors with volunteers. To do this, applicants will only have to call the municipal social action center (CCAS) who will register their request. This can range from a simple friendly visit to accompaniment for a meeting, including an afternoon of board games.
An outing, a pretext for social connection
The CCAS will centralize the requests which will be accepted or not by the registered volunteers.There have been cases where requests have been processed within ten minutes.smiles Anne Guenand, teacher-researcher at the University of Technology of Compiègne (UTC) and founder of the platform. Half of the requests are accepted in less than three hours. 52% of actions correspond to small mobility. It is also a pretext for social connection. And it is a way to identify problems: the volunteer can inform the CCAS about points of vigilance, for example a person who may be in poor health. He also has a sentinel role.»
Volunteers to recruit
For now, 70 volunteers from Catholic Relief Services, a partner association of this system, are already registered on the list. “We hope to attract new ones“, confides Ludovic Josset, head of the Secours Catholique branch in Beauvais.
For its part, the association is committed to training volunteers. For them, using the platform is simple: they have a solicitation list, if one matches them they see the name of the beneficiary. If they accept, their phone number appears. All you have to do is call him to offer his services.
A volunteer recruitment campaign will be organized by Secours Catholique at the start of the school year.
I help here Oise is 7 years old
“Beauvais Entraide” is part of the large platform “J’aide ici Oise” created by Anne Guenand in 2017. A teacher-researcher at UTC in Compiègne, she had this idea in a hospital bed.After a car accident, I spent four months bedridden, without daring to ask for helpshe says. I went to see the senior citizens’ club to find out how they did it. They told me that they didn’t necessarily dare call their neighbors for this kind of thing, but rather people they didn’t necessarily know. We tested the platform in 2016 in Compiègne, and we recorded 951 requests.»
Today, “I help here Oise” is present in all four corners of the department.
