Tragic stories of lonely retirees – alarm for social services
This story is exceptional. But how much is recognizable about the life of a person who is alone in old age, when he can disappear without a trace …
– Valentina Anatolyevna Karpova was born in 1946. there is a supplement to the pension, which is drawn up through the pension fund – compensation to the person caring for her, – they tell us in August 2021 in the Kizela social assistance service of the Perm Territory about their ward, a blind pensioner. Social workers are confident that the woman still lives in her hometown.
This is not true. Valentina Karpova went missing in October 2019 in the Sverdlovsk region.
Valentina Anatolyevna worked in the village of Shakhta at a meteorological station, and was also a leader there. When coal mining in the village was stopped, according to the resettlement program, she left for Kizel, in a one-room apartment. Moreover, she put a couple of million rubles in the bank as a result of the move.
In 2016, the pensioner lost her eyesight. Problems appeared, which the neighbors at home began to notice: either they accidentally break the window leaf, or they don’t turn off the tile – the fire almost happened … The neighbors were worried about her, and for themselves, and decided to look for relatives in the woman’s homeland – in the Baikalovsky municipal district Sverdlovsk region. So they went to Sergei Karpov, the nephew of the pensioner.
In early June 2019, Sergei hired a Gazelle and transported his aunt with all her belongings from the Perm Territory to the Sverdlovsk Region, to the village of Baikalovo. The former transport police officer did not have a permanent job for many years. The aunt with her apartment and savings was very useful for him in life.
A bank card with the pensioner’s savings, gold jewelry, even blood stains on the carpet, the court was not convinced
For three months, until mid-September, Valentina Karpova lived with her nephew in the same house. And then, according to him, a strange thing happened. The blind woman packed her things into two bags, got into the car, which drove up to the gate of the house, and drove off to a certain Birch Guy with relatives who had come from nowhere. No one saw her again. The telephones allegedly left to Sergei by this very unfamiliar family turned out to belong to strangers. Only in October 2019, when Nadezhda Ilinykh, Valentina Kanaeva and several other distant relatives of Valentina Anatolyevna noticed her disappearance and sounded the alarm, Karpova was put on the wanted list. Recently, the Baikalovsky District Court considered the case against Sergei Karpov. They accused the Ural man of the murder of his own aunt. The bank card with the pensioner’s savings, gold jewelry found in the kitchen of the accused, even blood stains on the carpet (DNA analysis confirmed it was Karpova’s blood!) And a notary certified will, according to which the woman left all the property to her nephew, the court was not convinced. All evidence is considered circumstantial. And most importantly, the body of the pensioner has not yet been found.
When they could not prove the fact of the murder, Sergei was charged with embezzling 480 thousand rubles from the pensioner’s card. He managed to spend almost half a million in a month while the card was in his hands. Neighbors talk about daily parties, about taxis that were on duty all day near the house …
In the courtroom, before sending the case for further investigation, the defendant said:
– I don’t admit my guilt, because I didn’t do anything illegal. I also have a petition, a request to the court regarding the confiscated jewelry. I also ask you to return your bank cards, because for a year and a half, utility bills are not paid!
We briefly told this story to the employees of Kizel’s social service, who believe that Valentina Anatolyevna still lives in the Perm Territory, receives a pension and an additional payment for an assistant. For two years (!), No one from the social service has ever come to her house or even called the lonely blind pensioner.
If a person has officially died, the system will find out about it, but other radical changes in life pass, it turns out, unnoticed. Valentina Anatolyevna stopped coping with household appliances, then moved, then disappeared …
“She had no friends, no one came,” says Tatyana, a neighbor from Kizel, who helped the pensioner.
– Since 2008, a district form of social service has been introduced into the work of social service organizations in the Sverdlovsk region. Its activities are aimed at early detection and prevention of social ill-being, timely provision of necessary assistance to citizens, – Irina Chernysheva, Deputy Minister of Social Policy of the Sverdlovsk Region, told RG. – The territory of the region’s settlements is divided into 329 service areas. At the same time, the current legislation provides that the provision of social services is declarative in nature, namely, the basis for considering the issue of providing social services is an application submitted in written or electronic form.
But the social services in the Middle Urals did not find out about Valentina Karpova, because she did not register and did not submit an application.
Of course, a woman in her city could count on regular visits from a social worker or even a nurse. Why didn’t she ask for it? Afraid? Or maybe she didn’t know, but there was no one to tell?
“The information system is not sufficiently developed, although there is some progress in this direction,” said Alena Davydova, head of the patronage service of the Moscow charity organization “Mercy”, with RG. – In order to receive help, a person must know its scope and the procedure for receiving it. We have to tell older people what they are entitled to from the state and how they can get these services, although this is not our function. We had such a story: a social worker came to a completely blind lonely grandfather once a week. Of course, this was not enough. We turned to the social security authorities. There was no need to swear or seek, they simply explained the situation, and the person was provided with daily hot food. Criminality is not so common in our life. But there are cases when the bodies of lonely people are found in apartments, alas, there are.
In 2021, a new system of long-term care for elderly citizens and disabled people is being introduced in 24 constituent entities of the Russian Federation. Among them are Tyumen and Samara regions, Altai and Trans-Baikal regions. There they are working out the mechanisms of the revealing principle of social work, when the social services themselves are looking for citizens in need of outside care, and do not expect applications from them. But new forms of work are being found in other regions as well. Here is what Roman Glazov, PR-specialist of the Complex Center for Social Services for the Population of the Nevsky District of St. Petersburg, told “RG”:
– Two years ago, we opened a new department for the care of persons in need of outside care. In short, we call these employees “social caregivers”. It is intended for people who need daily supervision. Social caregivers, or caregivers, come daily, including weekends, 1 to 3 times a day. St. Petersburg has become one of the pilot cities for such a service. It is part of a new long-term care system. It is aimed at ensuring that a person remains in a familiar environment as long as possible, and does not end up, for example, in a boarding school. At home, most people find it easier to deal with old age. The social services program for each of our wards is reviewed every year or immediately if there is a sharp deterioration in health.
If there were such a department in Kizel! .. But right now in every Russian city and village there are old people who are lonely and confused. Anyone can turn to social assistance services – even a relative, even a neighbor or a former colleague. The services, depending on the income of the beneficiary, will be free of charge or on a partial payment basis. In any case, the amount will be lifting! But people in need of help should find out about such an opportunity in time.
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