Social Innovation in Long-Term Care: Lessons from the Italian Case.

Georgia Casanova,Giovanni Lamura,Andrea Principi

doi:10.3390/ijerph17072367

Abstract

The debate on policies addressing the challenges posed by population ageing pays increasing attention to sustainable and innovative ways to tackle the multidimensional impact this phenomenon has on society and individuals. Moving from the findings of two European research projects, a qualitative study based on a rapid review of the literature, expert interviews, focus groups and case studies analysis has been carried out in Italy. This study illustrates which social innovations have been recently implemented in this country’s long-term care (LTC) sector, and the areas in which further steps are urgently needed in the future. This takes place by first highlighting the existing links between social innovation and LTC, and then by identifying the key factors that can facilitate or hinder the implementation of these initiatives. Finally, the study suggests how to promote social innovation, by strengthening the “integration” and “coordination” of available services and resources, through a—for this country still relatively—new approach towards ageing, based on pillars such as prevention and education campaigns on how to promote well-being in older age.

Highlights

The Italian long-term care (LTC) system, as in most Mediterranean countries, is usually labeled as ‘familialist’, because the role of formal care provision is quite marginal compared to that played by the pervasive assistance traditionally granted by family members [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
Findings were grouped in accordance with the study goals and illustrated separately in four subsections: the relationships between SI and LTC; the main social innovation demand in Italy; the key factors currently supporting/preventing Social Innovation; and policy recommendations
The results of our study show that in Italy the inclusion of migrant care workers (MCWs) in the LTC system is pursued by means of experiences aiming at the recognition of MCW’s skills, as an intermediate step needed to formalize their contribution to the overall care path

Summary

Introduction

The Italian long-term care (LTC) system, as in most Mediterranean countries, is usually labeled as ‘familialist’, because the role of formal care provision is quite marginal compared to that played by the pervasive assistance traditionally granted by family members [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Notwithstanding that, the risk of a high level of unmet needs remains one of the main challenges in the Italian LTC sector, due to consistently low LTC expenditure, which has never exceeded 1.9% of the GDP over the last decade [11,12,13]. This is all the more worrying in the light of the continued ageing of the Italian population, and, of the overall need for care: in 2017, 22.6% of the Italian population was 65 or older, and the national ageing index reached a value of 168.9 [14]. In the last decade in Italy, to other

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