The right for everyone to live as independent a life as possible was highlighted yesterday when two apartments were handed over to the Richmond Foundation by the Housing Authority to be used to resettle back into the community people with mental health difficulties.

The foundation has nine apartments around the island, in addition to the two that were handed over yesterday.

Richmond Foundation chief executive officer Doris Gauci stressed the importance of reintegrating people into society.

At the moment, she said, there were 32 people benefiting from the foundation's supported housing scheme.

The problem, she said, was lack of resources. There were at least 30 other people residing in Mount Carmel Hospital who were ready to be integrated into society as soon as space was available.

Family and Social Solidarity Minister Dolores Cristina said the principle of social inclusion often meant working across disciplines and departments.

"The focus here is on the client. It is only through a client-centred approach that we may enhance the quality of service the government offers to a wide spectrum of users," she said, adding that work was ongoing to provide increasingly personalised services.

Ms Cristina expressed the hope that more apartments would be passed on to the foundation in future.

Ms Gauci said the next step was to create a housing scheme offering more support, since a number of people needed more support than others. She said that when the supported housing scheme started in 1999 there was resistance by neighbours but nowadays the attitude was different. "Despite the fact that the stigma is still there, there is a different attitude by neighbours, who give a helping hand to people with mental health difficulties," she said.

Housing Authority chairman Marisa Micallef Leyson said the authority had given around Lm7,000 in subsidies to the Richmond Foundation.

She said that through an initiative aimed at assisting non-governmental organisations, agencies could apply for a property, or for funding to refurbish a property which would be used to offer a housing service. She said that in this way the authority was able to reach a number of clients who had specific problems.

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