The state of exception generated by the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the fragility of the social model of the large European countries - including Italy - both externally and internally. On the external level, the crisis in the logistics and production systems has overturned the prospects of the globalisation process, calling into question many consolidated certainties. Internally, on the other hand, the suspension of many individual freedoms - and the consequent compression of certain rights to the advantage of choices based on solidarity - has marked an element of profound discontinuity with respect to the last three decades. In both contexts - internal and external - the State has once again presented itself as a leading actor in the major economic and social transformations. And in all of this, it has also rediscovered itself as the main actor on which the task of protecting the most fragile sections of the population, including the elderly, has been placed - although the numerous and sometimes tragic limits to the action of its institutions have emerged.
On the level of rules and law, the new role of the State and the continuing pandemic crisis have marked a decisive turning point in the debate on the balance between freedom and solidarity in all fields, thus marking the transition from a scheme aimed at efficiency and competition according to the common rules of the market, to a different one, oriented towards strengthening the sustainability and resilience of the social structures of our country, even before the economic ones, with profound legal implications. A debate has been reopened on rights, on their balancing and on the elaboration of new sustainable social models capable of relaunching a new season of the Welfare State.
Italy and the large European countries are in fact facing a rapid ageing of the population which requires the elaboration of effective legal instruments suitable to make possible new, sustainable and investable solidarity models. The path to be followed requires an analysis of what exists, in order to assess the various economic and social implications of the current rules and their possible evolutions. In fact, it is first of all necessary to verify the adequacy of some legal institutions already present in our system, measuring their effectiveness in the new social reality.
In this framework, the projects aims at exploring the possibility of alternative a models of organisation and management to help the elderly other than that of the RSAs. Is it possible to create a model of organisation and management capable of preserving and enhancing the abilities of the individuals involved, their identities, the value of social contacts and cooperation, thus guaranteeing the elderly a more adequate social and care environment as well as an overall better quality of life? Is it possible to build a model of old age management centered on the principle of mutual aid and mutual assistance? And what should a model capable of achieving this look like? And can the institutions of our private law support or guarantee such a model?
In that perspective, the project intends to build a management and organisation model for the third age, as an alternative to what is offered by the RSAs, which responds to the needs of the elderly in the light of the changes taking place and of three essential principles: "dignity, identity, relationality".
This objective will be pursued through: a) analysis of the most suitable solutions for the implementation of light residential care; ; b) identification of the legal institutions currently provided by the Italian legal system that can help to achieve this goal and development of the proposal for their integration in the light of the comparison with the reality of other European countries; c) comparative analysis of some significant foreign experiences; d) observation and monitoring of a number of micro-experimental realities in Piedmont; e) development of a model-syste