In Italy, around a third of parents raising a child with a disability are over the age of 64, and more than half of adults with disabilities still live with their parents well into adulthood. For many families, the question of what happens once parents can no longer provide care remains unresolved, and people with disabilities who stay fully dependent on ageing parents tend to report a markedly lower quality of life. In Legnago and the surrounding municipalities of Verona's territory, this need is especially pressing, with few residential alternatives that let someone with a disability build an independent life while staying close to their community.
The project
Fondazione la Casa Volante already runs a shared home where six young adults with disabilities live together, supported around the clock by operators and educators. This project renovates the second half of the same building, recently acquired, to extend that same family-style model to five more young adults with disabilities, ranging from mild to more severe, whose families are ready to begin this transition while they can still be closely involved, rather than waiting for it to become an emergency.
Alongside the new living spaces, the project creates an accessory space for workshop and craft activities, open to the wider community rather than reserved only for residents, turning the house into a point of contact between people with disabilities and the rest of the neighbourhood. The aim is to give these five young adults and their families a planned, voluntary transition away from the family home, building genuine social inclusion, reducing discrimination and expanding their autonomy of choice over where and how to live.
Who the project is for
The project's direct beneficiaries are five young adults with disabilities, ranging from mild to more severe, who move into the renovated second home, together with their families, who take part in preparing this transition.
Its impact reaches further, to the roughly 200 families in the area raising a child with a disability, who share the same uncertainty about the future, and to local social services, which gain a concrete, family-style alternative to draw on alongside their own support for these families.
Project name: 'UNA GRANDE CASA PERCHE''
Proposing organisation: Fondazione lacasavolante
Area of intervention: Inclusion & Social Development
Country: Italy