INTERSOS’ mobile team supported by UNICEF reports about its experience with a family positive to COVID-19 and living in one of the squats areas of the Italian capital.
We are in one of the housing squats in the Eastern area of Rome. This squat hosts almost 500 people coming from Western, Eastern and Northern Africa, Italy, Eastern Europe, but also from South American countries like Ecuador, Perù, Colombia, Venezuela e Cuba. For the housing squats that we are supporting the autumn months have been difficult. After passing unscathed the first wave of Covid-19, in autumn, among the squat’s inhabitants appeared the first positive COVID-19 case. Causing a growing sentiment of fear, anxiety and uncertainty. However the community was not taken off guard.
Thanks to the learning activities regarding prevention and management of positive cases that our team had carried out in the previous months, the people in the community knew what actions to take. They quickly organized themselves scheduling cleaning and disinfection shifts for the rooms. In doing so, they followed operating procedures and divisions of risk. The health promoters also told us that they set up a separate isolation area for positive cases, such area was organized with the twofold aim “to secure the community, but also to avoid that the infected people could suffer the isolation condition”.
The whole community was involved in “treating the cases”; they offered assistance, food, dry-cleaning and any kind of possible support to children.
The story of Josy’s family
In October, during one of our team’s visits, we met for the first time Josehaly (now Josy for everyone) and her three children Patricia, Daniel and Alexis.
Josy’s eldest daughter Patricia was the first to test positive in the family and was consequently moved to the isolation area. Soon enough, almost all the rest of her family joined her. At the moment of the infection her dad was travelling outside Rome for work and found himself separated from his family for over a month, unable to come back home. During one of our last visits, while we were distributing hygiene kits assembled to respond to personal and domestic hygienic needs and to the children’s emotional decompression, Josy told us “We waved at each other through a closed window, it was very sad”. Nowadays, recalling those months Josy is serene, but it is easy to perceive how hard those moments must have been for her and her family. She was worried about the unpredictability of COVID-19, her husband away from them, her youngest children, and about her life put-on hold for an undefined period of time. “I used to call you hundreds of times a day” she recalls making light of that, “it was very hard for me not knowing when I could get out, because every additional day in isolation was one additional day without an income”.
Community life might be a huge risk during a pandemic; however, this is not an unalterable situation. In fact, through the exploitation of the strengths of the community – such as the mutual understanding, the internal self-help and the characteristic solidarity that this lifestyle creates – and thanks to activities linked to the diffusion of correct information, it is possible to develop an effective safety net.
This was the result of the joint engagement of UNICEF and INTERSOS in the latest months in the housing squats. This positive result has been achieved working with the communities, preparing, informing and empowering them, while, at the same time, granting our constant presence, that also served to bridge the communication gap with the competent health authorities. The results exceeded our expectations. “When COVID-19 arrived in our home, I thought it’s over, everyone in the building is going to be infected” said Josy right before saying goodbye to us, “we share toilettes, and only on this floor there are six families, I didn’t think it was possible to prevent contagion. On the contrary, we only had few cases, and this is mainly due to the support we received in this journey”. Positive cases have been contained and the people came out stronger. They are more aware of the value of their community. Josy can make plans again, she wants to start a catering activity and then who knows…
In this housing squat INTERSOS team, supported by UNICEF, operates since 2017 with psychosocial activities meant to increase individual competences and to identify and signal specific vulnerabilities to the social services. Since March 2020, the team has started to carry out medical examinations to prevent COVID-19, through sensibilisation activities regarding prevention and risk-containment measures. Moreover, the team distributes hygienic-sanitary kits; facilitates access to activities of psychosocial support to groups of women, women with kids, and even to gender-based violence prevention services (e.g psychological support, anti-trafficking network, anti-violence centres, and other services on a case-by-case basis).
Additionally, the team has trained the “health promoters” of the community. They have the duty to coordinate themselves with the health authorities regarding the management of suspected positive COVID-19 cases, and the diffusion of information and prevention guidelines inside the building. Since June 2021, the intervention has been funded by the European Union Directorate-General for Health under the programme “Safeguarding the health of refugee and migrant children”, that aims at granting qualitative health assistance and providing adequate information for refugee and migrant children and their families.