Hospital de Santo António studies creation of day care for employees

A Local Health Unit (ULS) Santo António, in Porto, today, has advanced to study a solution to the creation of a day care center for employees' children, ambition of 18 years ago of the Staff House of this institution.

In a written reply to the Lusa agency, source of the board of directors said that “the multiplicity of variables and the funding model do not allow, for the moment, to define investment deadlines and values”, but the project is under analysis.

We are studying a solution that allows the sustainability of the project, which will involve demanding standards of installation and equipment, as well as concepts of access and operation, leading to approval by regulators”, reads in the answer and five months after, also to Lusa, ULS Santo António said that this project was not part of its main business.

“ The conditions of installation and equipment of daycare centers, technical management policies and standards, as well as the provision of hierarchies and qualified professionals, are regulated and demanding matters, which are not part of the ‘core business’ [main business] of ULSSA, nor of the technical skills of its managers and employees”, said ULS Santo António on 8 June.

On that date that entity recognized that “incorporating day care centers in hospitals, rare in the hospital park of the National Health Services, seems a virtuous idea” and admitted that the North Maternal Child Center (CMIN), a structure belonging to the ULS Santo António, has a space that, having not been designed for day care, has come to be considered for this purpose.

“It has not been returned, but busy with ULSSA’s care needs”, read in the answer before today, the day after a meeting with the ULS Staff House Santo António, entity that in June 2008 presented a project that came to be approved by Social Security to create a day care center in that health institution of Porto.

The project was dependent on the implementation of changes imposed by a 2011 law, which essentially imposed changes in the nursery and during the pandemic period, “for operational reasons”, the facilities for the equipment were used for other purposes while works were taking place in other services.

About 18 years later this old ambition remains unfulfilled, despite several insistences and requests from the Staff House.

Today, in statements to the agency Lusa, the vice president of Casa do Pessoal, José Xavier, revealed that a meeting took place on Wednesday with the board of directors of the ULS Santo António, in which “a number of walls, several barriers were overcome”.

“ At this moment we have a categorical interest of the Santa Casa do Misericórdia do Porto and will probably proceed with a proposal. And the chairman of the Board of Directors [of ULS Santo António] was categorical in supporting this project”, said the Vice President of the Staff House.

Neither does ULS. Santo António, neither José Xavier advanced to Lusa dates or investment values.

“ Yesterday [Wednesday] at the meeting a little light was made at the end of the tunnel. We've overrun several walls, several barriers. It's a very beneficial thing for our institution to have a day care center. It's to help a lot of people here who have kids and promote their family in a healthy way. A place where one can leave the child and then, finishing the shift, go to get, a safe place ", said.

The Vice President of the House of Personnel of the ULS Santo António pointed out the possibility of creating three nursery rooms for about 80 children, “priority being given to the children of the employees and then with a percentage of vacancies open to the community”.

In November 2023, the ULS, then Hospital Center, assured that it would resume the nursery project after the completion of the transfer and certification of the immunohemotherapy service, refusing, however, to proceed with any date for the launch of the public tender.

That same year, but in March, in response to Lusa, the hospital had already indicated that the public tender for the installation of a day care center for the children of the professionals would be launched as soon as the facilities occupied by the Hematology and Immunohemotherapy service were free, which did not happen.

At the origin of this project is a broader one presented in 2008, whose work – budgeted at EUR 60 million – received community incentives and contemplated the construction of a new building, the reconstruction of the building of the former Júlio Dinis Maternity, current CMIN, and the construction of an underground parking lot on which a small building was built that would house a daycare center.