People with disabilities and carers, support of over 627 million
Manoeuvre allocates resources for the recognition of family carers. From January, a call for help for the working and living autonomy of the most fragile will be active
Key points
Launching in January Life and Opportunities, a call for tenders, with an endowment of over 370 million, "that will finance projects capable of best promoting the living, working and recreational dimension of the lives of people with disabilities, flanking the life project with concrete actions". This is how the Minister for Disability, Alessandra Locatelli, explains to Il Sole 24 Ore the new measure aimed at Third Sector organisations that must work in a network, also with the support of institutions, and guarantee continuity for projects. "With the available resources it will be possible to renovate spaces, purchase means of transport, equipment and materials, and activate training courses for labour inclusion and also for operators. The call for bids,' adds Locatelli, 'includes two other lines of action: one for the promotion of work in social agriculture and one for recreational time for children and adolescents with disabilities. The aim is to support and create virtuous, replicable and lasting models of action'.
Resources in Manoeuvre
The commitment to accessibility and inclusion also finds space in the Budget Law, approved yesterday in the Chamber of Deputies with 216 yes, with the allocation of resources for the recognition offamily caregivers. "This is 257 million to be distributed to cohabiting and prevailing family caregivers according to the regulatory framework to be approved by the Council of Ministers in January," the minister commented. "After years in which more than 30 bills have foundered, with this proposal with differentiated protections - on which more than 50 subjects between family members, associations and territories have worked - it will be possible to guarantee greater dignity and concrete support to all family caregivers".
The government's objective is to put a firm point from which there will be no turning back, with the prospect, on the contrary, of giving better guarantees and protection to persons with disabilities and their families. "This time we have the chance to go all the way: there is the rule, a economic coverage - the highest among all those contained in the bills of the past -, a stratum is identified, and above all economic and non-economic supports are guaranteed," confirms Locatelli, outlining the structure of the intervention: cohabiting caregivers, with low income and high welfare burden, are granted a tax-free economic contribution of up to 400 euro per month, paid quarterly or half-yearly.
There are also a number of non-economic protections, such as the possibility of requesting that the life project or individualised care plan include:
- replacement of the caregiver within 24 hours in emergencies, psychological support, medical examinations and teleconsultations, priority access to health interventions and timely scheduling of interventions;
- access to the care recipient's health data
- recognition of the skills acquired through the care task in order to obtain the qualification of socio-health worker or other professional figures in the socio-health area, in order to facilitate reintegration into employment;
- the modification of working hours for care activities and the use of agile work;
- the extension of the right to parental leave up to the age of 18;
- the possibility of receiving holidays and leave in solidarity from colleagues employed by the same employer.
"In the case of a young caregiver," the minister further specifies, "it will be possible to request the compatibility of community service hours with care activities, to be exempt from paying university fees, if a student, and to obtain recognition of the care experience as training credit and in school-to-work training courses.
