Italy – Aspasia Plus
| Criteria | Description | |
| Description of the measure | Measure | Aspasia Plus (Project)
Integrated system for the formalization and qualification of domiciliary care for elderly people. (Sistema integrato per l’emersione e la qualificazione del lavoro di cura a domicilio per la polazione anziana ) |
| Country | Italy
The project is lead at local level in the municipalities of Ferrara, Cento, Codigoro, Copparo, Berra, Formignana, Iolanda di Savoia, Ro and Tresigallo. (Northern Italy) |
|
| Managing Authority | Municipality of Ferrara.
(In partnership with the Municipalities of Cento and Codigoro and with the Special Entity for Services to Individuals of Copparo, covering for the other Municipalities). |
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| Legal Basis | Project lead by local Italian public authorities, with funding from the Department for Equal opportunities of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. | |
| Launched in year | 2009 (Start: 10 March 2009 – End: 9 March 2012) | |
| Indicators of context | The increasing ageing of the population rises the demand of homecare services. In order to tackle this, families have being increasingly deciding to ask for private homecare services. However, this kind of service is usually configured as undeclared work, thus lowering both working conditions and care’s quality. | |
| Main objectives | To favour the development of competences, the formalization of caregivers and to contribute to their insertion in the local services framework. | |
| Nature and type of public intervention | The project foresees public incentives intended to push undeclared working relations to be formalised. These incentives are designed to be intertwined with the formation of caregivers.
Incentives* are provided in 2 forms: 1) Incentives for the formalization of working relations: payment of hourly fiscal contributions (both on worker and employer sides). Maximum value: 1,10€/hour. Hours cap: 40 hours. Maximum duration of the contribution: 12 months. 2) Incentives for the lightening of bureaucratic procedures: € 50 in contribution services providing contract-setting, payment administration, social security contribution payments. The conditions to obtain these incentives are: A) Regular working contract established after 11/12/2007. B) Signature of an “ethical agreement” (Carta etica) for the quality of the care service. C) Caregiver attending the project’s training courses. Such training is provided by Municipalities’ staff supported by the cooperative “Anziani e non solo”. D) Suitable working time for the care service. The project also provides actions for strengthening the management of offer and demand matching, training courses for caregivers and integration of private caregiving services into the framework of local service provision. *The incentives are provided in the form of cash-payments by the single partner Municipalities up to the amount of project’s funding share they were endowed. |
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| Type of service providers and the competition between them | Private non-profit, private for-profit, direct employment of workers by users. | |
| Type of employment relations | Workers are mostly hired directly by the user. | |
| The administrative framework and the role of the public authority | The manager of the project is the Municipality of Ferrara, that delegated the operative tasks related to this duty to its Unit for Local Health. | |
| Type of services | Care services for elderly people. | |
| Target groups (users and workers) | Workers : caregivers, long-term unemployed, low-skilled.
Users : Elderly people in need of homecare services. |
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| Effects | Employment | N.A. |
| Creation and/or fostering of a sector and its activities | The “Aspasia help-desk centers” were open for 877 days providing assistance and support for user families and managing the distribution and collection of relevant documents.
The total number of contacts concluded thanks to the project were 5,073. At the end of the project, 241 caregivers were inscribed in the official local registers. |
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| Reduction of undeclared work | 7,500 copies of the brochure favouring the formalisation of undeclared working relations were distributed in 5 languages (Arabian, English, French, Italian and Russian).As for the incentives:
1) Incentives for the formalization of working relations. Number of applications: 628. Number of accepted applications: 480. 2) Incentives for the lightening of bureaucratic procedures. Number of applications: 562. Number of accepted applications: 457. |
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| Better working conditions | 3,500 copies of a brochure intended to the formation of caregivers were distributed in 5 languages (Arabian, English, French, Italian and Russian).
1271 auto-training courses were started and 181 caregivers started Aspasia’s training course sessions after evaluation of their competences acquired out of experience. |
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| Budgetary effects | Public costs | Total of € 1,033,721.42:
– € 383,721.42 from consortium partners (37.1%), – € 650,000 from national funds (62.9%). |
| Earn back effects | No study conducted. | |
| Net cost | No study conducted. |