Finding a carer online: when digital technology attempts to fill a structural gap

We know this by now: Italia is one of the countries with the oldest populations in the world. People aged 65 and over now account for over 24 per cent of the population and, according to Istat projections, will exceed 34 per cent by 2050, with an even more marked increase among those aged over 80, whose proportion is set to double – from 7.6 per cent to 13.6 per cent – over the coming decades. Who looks after them now, and who will look after them in the future? The most common solution to this need is to employ a private carer: it is estimated that around one million home carers work in Italia, the vast majority of whom are foreign nationals.

Whilst demand is growing, the regular supply is shrinking. The number of domestic workers who have paid at least one contribution to INPS has fallen to around 804,000 in recent years – some 173,000 fewer than the peak in 2021 – whilst the Censis Family (Net) Work report by Censis, commissioned by Assindatcolf, estimates just 8.5 carers for every 100 people aged over 60 living alone. It is within this context – greater need, fewer formally employed staff, and a chronically underfunded public welfare system for those who are not self-sufficient – that digital platforms designed to speed up the matching of supply and demand have proliferated in recent months, each with a different business model.

The most recent example is Lebadanti.it, a platform founded by Valerio Carboni. Launched in 2019 as a simple classifieds board, it relaunched a structured version of the service online in July. The model operates on a pay-as-you-go basis: registration is free for both parties, but a credit – starting at 9 euros – is charged for each contact initiated, with an automatic refund if the carer does not respond within 36 hours. ‘We’ve chosen to charge for the contact, not simply for the ability to search,’ explained Carboni. The company itself compares this with the average cost of a traditional agency, estimated at around 500 euros for recruitment and selection, and with waiting times that can be as long as two weeks.

Alongside this model, there are other approaches. MyBadante focuses on being completely free for both parties: there is no charge to unlock a contact, and it emphasises profiles with verified reviews and a multilingual interface. However, it is a newer platform and still on a relatively small scale. BadaFinder, on the other hand, more closely replicates the logic of a traditional job board: families post adverts themselves and receive direct applications from interested carers, without a credit system or guarantee for individual contacts.

Yet another model is that of portals run by the sector’s own trade associations, which focus on vetting candidates as a distinguishing feature compared to open marketplaces. This is the case with “Find your Domestic Worker”, the portal promoted by Assindatcolf, the national association of domestic employers, which restricts access by charging a small fixed fee to unlock verified profiles. This approach seeks to address one of the sector’s key challenges: according to a Censis survey commissioned by Assindatcolf itself, the search for domestic staff remains overwhelmingly reliant on word of mouth, used by 76.4 per cent of households for domestic workers and 70.8 per cent for carers, precisely because specialised channels – agencies and online platforms – are perceived as less accessible and more expensive.