The Milanese experiment then gave way to a new trend, and now all the other large Italian cities are getting organised: the crisis has in fact hit the welfare system at its heart; not only the public one, but also the "self-managed welfare". According to a recent Censis-Fondazione Generali survey, for many families the economic commitment to pay carers has become unsustainable. It is estimated that 120 have had to give it up. And those who "resisted" often did so at the cost of very heavy sacrifices, such as using up all their savings or even selling their home.
This short-circuit substantially determined by the encounter between the economic crisis and the aging of society is at the origin of the experimentation of new intervention models. Not just in aged care – as in the case of the Municipality of Milan – but also in supporting families in difficulty. Interventions that have in common the goal of reviving systems of supportive relationships that no institutional action is able to replace.
In Turin, for example, the project already started in 2003, but is recently gaining ground “A family for a family”, promoted by Paideia Foundation. The reference model is well known and is also ancient: in various situations, especially in the past, it worked spontaneously and was called "good neighbourhood". Only that in this case the meeting between the two families takes place within a project that lasts one year and is supported by a tutor who, in turn, is in contact with the social worker who follows the family in difficulty.
The support that the "supporting family" offers does not refer only to material needs, but concerns all aspects of daily life. A concrete case is that of families formed by only one parent and without parental reference points. Born in Turin, the project was then extended to various areas of Piedmont, Emilia Romagna, Lombardy, Veneto, Valle d'Aosta, Abruzzo and has also recently arrived in Rome, through a collaboration between Caritas and the Department of Politics Social. Up to now, a total of about 300 "coachings" have been activated with 500 children involved. The experimentation in the Capital (which initially concerns eight families) is an important step towards the aim of making this practice a stable alternative to fostering a single child. In other words, making it an ordinary social policy also at the national level.
