Disabled people 'under 70': here is the Plan that allocates 3 billion and rewards independent living

From the customised life project to social housing, from home care and integrated social assistance to relief services to support families. These are the new (or renewed) tools put in the field by the new National Plan for non-self-sufficiency 2025-2027, which has received the go-ahead from the Unified Conference - having acquired the technical agreement from the Regions and Anci - and which puts more than three billion lire into the field over the three-year period. With an absolute novelty: the recipients are non-self-sufficient persons up to the age of 70, and only while waiting for the next Plan in favour of the non-self-sufficient elderly, prescribed by Law 33/2023 (the Reform with delegated powers to the Government on the subject of the elderly), will part of the measures and resources also include the elderly population. It remains that the framework of interventions will also cover the elderly between the ages of 65 and 70.

In short, the new document - anticipated by the Quotidiano Sanità platform - is for the moment a 'transitional hybrid', which takes into account the bifurcation that has taken place in the last five years with the approval, on the one hand, of Legislative Decree 62/2024 on disability and the implementation of the customised and participatory individual life project (implementing Law 227/2021) - and on the other - of Law 33 and its maxi implementation decree (no. 29 of 15 March 2024). In the previous Plan 2022-2024 the recipients included both non-self-sufficient elderly persons with low or high care needs and persons with severe and very severe disabilities: from now on the measures will partly overlap until 2027, the year in which the new Plan expires, when the crossroads of the interventions between the two groups of recipients - disabled persons under 70 and non-self-sufficient elderly persons, i.e. over 70 - will be fully defined. Moreover, according to the current timetable, starting from 1 January 2027, the experimentation of the new 'basic assessment' with the criteria for the Inps assessment of non-self-sufficiency, which has been in force in several provinces of the country since the beginning of 2025, will have had to be concluded throughout the country.

Confirming the principle of socio-sanitary integration, the Plan introduces the customised life project as an individual planning tool, aimed at guaranteeing a path of global, continuous and multidimensional assistance, 'capable of enhancing - as stated in the technical report accompanying the document - the person's residual capacities, aspirations and potential, while respecting the principle of self-determination'. An approach inspired by community welfare that implies the full enrolment of the third sector, voluntary work and proximity networks to guarantee an integrated and homogeneous network of social and social-health services. The measures of which the under-70s with disabilities then become recipients include home and social assistance integrated with territorial health services, forms of collaboration and social housing, adaptation of home environments and new domotic technologies to support autonomy, and relief services for families.

Interventions are subject to a multidimensional needs assessment, carried out at a regional level, which takes into account the Isee, with increased access thresholds: not less than EUR 50,000 for people with very severe disabilities, increased to EUR 65,000 in the case of underage beneficiaries, applying the Isee for subsidised social-health services.

In the field are the resources of the Fund for the non-self-sufficient - intended to finance both this new Plan and the Plan for the non-self-sufficient elderly - assigned to the Ministry of Labour and Social Policies. For 2025 we speak of 982.255 million; for 2026 of 934.570 million and for 2027 of over 1.1 million.
The resources are divided according to an indistinct quota, which goes to support both persons with disabilities under 70 and the frail elderly and which amounts to a little more than 2 billion in the three-year period from 2025 to 2027; a quota tied to the implementation of the Essential Levels of Social Benefits (Leps), amounting to 300 million, and to the recruitment of personnel; a quota of 14.6 million for the implementation of 'projects for independent living'.