I read with great interest your article "Residential Communities for People with Intellectual Handicaps — After We're Gone," which reproduced Dr. Mariangela Bertolini's remarks at the conference "Handicap and Protected Housing." As the mother of a 39-year-old son with Down syndrome and as a director of ANFFAS, I find myself in complete agreement with the concerns she raises: the enormous and urgent need for residential communities, the call for job placements, the waste of public money, and the practical solutions she suggests for addressing this serious problem. Yet my heart—both as a mother and as an ANFFAS director—is less burdened about my son's future and that of so many others like him, because ANFFAS has already put into practice what she proposes, at Rivarolo Canavese (TO) in our community called La Torre.
In three social-care facilities run by ANFFAS, genuine homes for ten residents each with their own independent life, our young people—mostly orphans—have found an answer to the anguished question of "After We're Gone." The facilities are contracted with the local health authority. We have equipped workshops where our young people, guided and supported by trained staff, engage in ceramics, carpentry, gardening, and handicrafts according to their aptitudes and abilities. Some have found outside work; all participate in physical therapy, music therapy, and social integration activities with volunteer groups. They attend local events, outings, sports gatherings, and everything that helps them grow as human beings and members of society.
We members of ANFFAS—parents and relatives of young people with intellectual disabilities—have one goal in our decades-long, difficult commitment: to build for our children structures that recreate the warm family environment they knew, ensuring them a peaceful and dignified life even after we are no longer here. Many ANFFAS chapters have already established residential communities for orphaned disabled people alongside their day centers, run by agreement with the public authorities.
To awaken the conscience of all these parents, often elderly and weary, and to give them more than hope—to give them real certainty—ANFFAS created the National Foundation ANFFAS "After We're Gone," which has as its statutory purpose the implementation of initiatives including care, protection, material and moral support for mentally disabled orphans and those without family support. It provides substitute family services: family homes, residential communities, emergency housing, and similar structures (Article 4 of the National Foundation "After We're Gone" Statute).
The "Mini Housing" project that the National Foundation ANFFAS "After We're Gone" is developing in the La Torre Community at Rivarolo Canavese is an example of how this anguishing problem can be solved concretely. It is certainly not the only way, but we believe it is vital to start working now, to stop wasting time in discussion. We have clear ideas about "After We're Gone," and our young people cannot wait any longer—neither can their families.
We would be happy to share the fruits of our experience and the knowledge we have gained with anyone who needs it, including information on legal protections for people with mental disabilities under civil law—guardianship, partial interdiction, tutorship, donations, inheritance, and so on.
We believe it is essential to exchange ideas with other associations and people concerned with the question of "After We're Gone." Through the sharing of ideas, projects, and experience, we all become richer in knowledge and awareness, and more determined to work steadily and carefully toward solving the problem of what comes after.
- Prof.ssa Rosina Zandano, 1996 - Vice President, National Foundation ANFFAS "After We're Gone"
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