The country: cultural and social crisis and the need for change
Nowadays Italy is living a situation of great difficulty. In our country the economic crisis highlighted different critical issues at social, cultural and political level. Problems such us unemployment rate over the levels of the 70s, crisis of the welfare system, unbalanced distribution of resources between the North and South of the country and lawlessness have lead the population to a widespread perception of displacement. We are, in fact, experiencing a strong institutional crisis due to a conflict between different offices of the state and private groups of power both lacking in respecting the laws and the rules. The old and traditional political patterns no longer find the consent of the people as confirmed by the emerging political movement such as the "5 Star Movement" that collect the anger and the dissatisfaction of the citizens.
A general feeling of confusion is growing up in the population as seems unclear how to build a plan for the future of the country. At the same time is emerging a strong crisis of participation that has important influences in every social, cultural and political projects. In this sense the cultural problems of our country seems also produced at micro level in everyday life, in work places, in the attitudes of Italian citizens towards civic and social rules of cohabitation.
On the other hand In Italy is growing up a strong demand for a change. At local level a lot of initiatives pursuing innovation and change find the engagement of people that don't want any more to watch passively to the problems of our country. Paradoxically this context of severe difficulties seems to represent an opportunity for cultural, social and political renovation for the whole country. In particular is growing the marginalization of social groups with feeble social power such as youngster, elders, immigrants, people with disabilities and mental health problems. In this sense looking at these peoples at the “border” mean to look at the whole culture of our country starting to bridge the GAP and finding out how the problems of the “stigmatized” would be shared within the local community to organize new forms of cohabitation.
Where we work
The main area where we work ranks among the neighborhood Tuscolano-Cinecittà and the “Castelli Romani”, a group of villages and towns in the Alban Hills located at short distance from Rome. Cinecittà is especially famous for the film studios and is a very large neighborhood with more than 200,000 inhabitants. Cinecittà in fact is almost “a city in the city”, that is expanded from the 60's along “via Tuscolana”, a medieval street leading to the city of Tusculum (today Frascati). It is located between the archaeological park of Appia Antica, the biggest archeological area in the world, and “via Casilina”, a road that connected Rome to the river port of ancient Capua (near Naples).
The Cinecittà district, since its inception in 1950, has welcomed immigrants, mostly from central and southern Italy that in Rome has founded new supportive community with a common identity. This neighborhood "New" and peripheral has been already defined as "historic" for Rome because of the particular identity characterized its population often facing social problems; is not by chance that it is one of the districts of the City with more social services of the third sector. Nowadays the neighborhood have a mixed population as the area is composed by popular building assigned by the municipality to the poor families and more refined buildings resided by richer families. However the lack of a reliable social network, displacement and loneliness are common problems shared by families in this metropolitan area.
The other area where we work is the "Castelli Romani": a group of villages, just outside Rome, arising from the collapse of Latium Volcano hundreds of thousands years ago. In this area each village has a precise historical identity and life seems to go on in slower way than in the big city. People in this area, are used to say that “in the village everybody know each other”. Despite this, in our works we have found out a great difficulty in talking about disabilities and mental health problems associated with a relevant fear of stigma. In this sense the geographical and cultural characteristic of the area exacerbate the problems of those who deal with the problems of disability often facing a lack of social services.
The context of Disability in Italy: the organization of the services
With the Law 180 of the 1978 in Italy started the closure of psychiatric hospitals and asylums and the construction of community-based services. The “180's” pursued by the antipsichiatric movement guided by the important Psychiatrist Franco Basaglia is a fundamental law ordering the immediate dismission of the “insane asylums” and the “Mental Institutions”. Before this law, since the XVII century, people with intellectual disabilities and mental problems has been internalized in reclusive institution separed from the rest of the community.
After the 180's, while the new community based services still waited to be improved, the mentally ill and intellectually disabled people are readmitted in society and in the majority of cases reported in their families. The families, often not ready to this change, lived the past internatization with a feeling of guilt and the readmission in the family as an obligation.
In this sense is it important to understand how the 180's has been a powerfull groundbreaking law for the National Health Services and for the habits of people towards it. The National Health System, in fact, until 1983 was quite totally delegated to centralized institution called “assistential bodies” or “mutual body”.
The National Health Reform of the 1983 reorganized the National Health System reproducing the “British Model” of the community based services. In fact we have to wait since the 90's for a general law regulamenting the whole system of services or the intellectual disability and mental health services. The Law N.104 of the 1992 nowdays represents the most important normative reference for services targeted at people with disabilities in Italy. The law sets out specific services for social inclusion, integration and support such as family support services, homecare personal services, residential services, training and job placement services, school integration services. Considering the 104's togheter with the general organization of the National Health System in Italy would be usefull to undestand how the services previously listes should be of two types: the health services governed by the National Health sistem and the social services governed by the public amministration.
The“Third sector”
A brief historical consideration of the role of the Third Sector in the field of intellectual disability would be interesting for our scopes. The “third sector” has had its greatest development between the late 70's and the 80's. Groups of families, social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists in a climate of civic engagement have brought ahead the de-institutionalization challenge towards the construction of community based services for disability. In this sense the fast and innovative organization of the “services to the person” by the “Third Sector” has forestalled the regulation of services by the policy makers. Nowadays the need for renovation crossing the country seems to be shared among those who work in health and social services that often feel not to have enough resources to address the renovation of their work.
Regarding to this point in a project called “SPIN- Social Project Innovation Network” carried out by our organization with a group of Local NGO and charities all the founders members showed a “dark” point of view about the presents and the future sharing the nostalgic memories about the beginning of the work in the 80'.
One of the main problems is the fragmentation of the relationships between services, the families and the persons with disabilities and mental problems that appear as islands separated from each other, not used to exchange ideas and discuss daily problems and unable to cooperate to create innovative interventions. The Mental Health System seems to be an “archipelago in witch it's not easy to find a compass”. This represent a problem also for the families with intellectual disabilities that often use many services with no connection to each others and no clear differentiated objectives.
In this sense the limited resources that is threatening the existence of many services risk to become an excuse not face the complex issue related to how to build renovation in our field. Moreover the problematic relationship between families, institution and services emerges as an obstacle to rethink and verify the services
How can we facilitate the organization of a better and more sustainable offering that meets the needs of the citizenry?
Our works in the field of Intellectual Disability
GAP is an organization constituted on 21 of January 2012 in Rome by a group of psychologists. Since that time we are promoting projects addressed to social group at risk of exclusion. At the same time we promoted networking initiatives addressed to youth and social workers to promote a critical discussion on daily work and to implement new skills.
In fact our first project called “SPIN: Social Project Innovation Network” started on 1st May 2012 and founded under the Youth in Action program 2007-2013 has the main aim of “looking at daily work from another point of view”. With a group of partner organizations in Rome we have implemented an organizational and learning process to find out new criteria of intervention in the social and youth field. Through focus group, interviews and workshops we involved 11 organizations creating a space for discussion where the participants can rethink their work experience focusing the main problems faced in the daily work. All the speech and the stories collected has been reported in a booklet that we called “SPIN social working experiences: intervention criteria and changing perspectives”. The SPIN Project web portal ( http://www.spinproject.it/ ) collect some results of the project.
After the end of the project we have launched a working group to continue in the development of innovative criteria of intervention in social and cultural project.
The young adults with intellectual disability and their family represent the participants of other project implemented by our organization in the 2012/2013: the “Chiamalo se vuoi vivaio” project. With a group of families in the Province of Rome we build a nursery in with we grow up plants and we write stories about the daily problems they face. Plants and Stories that are also uploaded our blog http://chiamalosevuoivivaio.blogspot.it/ to disseminate the project results. For us the production of the plants and the stories is not a goal in itself but represents a tool that let us get in touch with the family system daily of people with intellectual disability also to build a bridge between with the social context round it.
“To build the bridge” we moved towards the Frascati Mental Health Center and the Municipality of Cinecittà to realize some innovative projects. The Mental Health Center is used to push the intellectual disabled persons “out” towards the available project and services for disabilities as it is very difficult for this persons to find a suitable place in the usual context of cohabitation. People with disabilities in fact show a strong “desire of normality”, want to do something useful for their community and the possibility to go in the usual place of cohabitation such as restaurant theater, bar, square where they often felt unwelcome. Considering these problems we build a project to use our plants to “redesign” a more comfortable places for people and families with disabilities inside and outside the Mental Health Center. With a similar aim we have prepared an action-research project in partnership with the Municipality of Cinecittà.
These are some findings of our projects that are informed by a way of working focused on the exploration of the culture shared at local level between diverse social actors. In this sense our methodology of psychosocial intervention is based upon the the construction of spaces and times for listening and understanding the problems of people as a fundamental step to engage people in realizing the services they need.
Our expectations about the YAID project
The Learning Partnership Grundtvig is an interesting chance to start a critical discussion with other organizations at European level about the problems we faced in our daily work with disability. Working with the families of young adults with disabilities we have focused the issues and problems that the de istituzionalizzation process posed to the family. The first problems with the families are confronted is the organization of the future specially at the end of the compulsory school. In the contexts of daily living the families see frustrated a desire for normalization understood as participation to the community activities as playing a sport, going to the cinema or theater, go out, find a job. In this context appear a problematic relationship between the families, the care services providers and the policy makers. The demand of normalization, in fact, is often translated by policy and services in a range of possible activities for people with disabilities. Working with the families we realized that these activities are rarely used make plan for the future while families share the expectation to be evaluated by professionals and are scared by losing services. In this context the care services providers often fail in engaging the families with their problems, expectations, ideas and desires in the construction of the project and the services. This make the practical organizations of “service for future” very difficult as each family have a strong feeling of loneliness and displacement about how to face the issue of disabled persons nowadays expected to live longer than their parents.
Regarding these issues we would like to explore what's going on with the families in Europe? What kind of relationship connects families, care services providers and policy makers in the other countries?
In fact also if we found very complex to work with families, we think it's interesting the critical attitude towards services showed by families that want to participate not to find their expectation falling. This is something really new in our country from an historical point of view: the families want to build services for their children and are no more available to let people with disabilities in the institutions. The real problem seems to be what the families expect for the future.
How we can improve innovative project and services regarding this important issue? How we can engage family in building their future starting now with us building their services?
These are some of the crucial points we would like to discuss during the project to develop a new approach to the family system of people with intellectual disabilities. These is also something we would like to explore by the interviews and the research.
Who we are going to involve in the project team.
We are a little organization composed by less than 20 staff members. We are group of young professionals aged 30 and associated to realize project and services for disability and families. Most of us are psychologists, Psychosocial researcher at University and student in a postgraduate school in Psychotherapy and Psychosocial Intervention. We work really in touch with each others and we try to use in the better way the resources and the competences we have. In this sense not having a strong role hierarchy or a clear separation in competence we are a flexible organization and it is not easy to decide whom is going to be involved in this European Learning Partnership. For this reason in these days we have explored what is an European Learning Partnership for our organization. The YAID Learning Partnership represent an opportunity to think that our difficult work with social groups at risk of exclusion can be developed in its quality. This is not easy to wish and pursue as the financial crisis has been proposed as the indisputable cause of the block of the renovation of project and services in our field. For us instead the main problems are cultural not financial as we motivated in this business card. In this sense we think its interesting that with the crisis, paradoxically, the social and cultural distance between the marginalized people addressed by our project and the professionals workers is reducing. This renovated “proximity” with the beneficiaries of our interventions, if we think about it, give us the possibility to hear their daily problems contextualizing and helping them to face it.
Regarding who we are going to involve in the project team, following the criterion of involving 3 persons for each organizations, 3 of us will be part of the project team participating in the transnational mobilities and meetings. At the same time we will build a working group open to the other members of our organization interested in working in this European project involving them in the realization of the project objectives and results. In this way we would like to start the exploitation of the project deeply connecting it with our daily interventions in the field of intellectual disabilities to share with the partners the ideas, experiences and the competences of our organization in a wider way.
Our project team members
Felice Bisogni,
cell: +39 393 41 31 110
felicebisogni@yahoo.it
Stefano Pirrotta
cell: +39 333 80 36 548
e-mail: stefano.pirrotta@gmail.com
Silvia Policelli
cell: +39 366 309 88 96
e-mail: silviapolicelli@yahoo.it
