Stable, supported by a committed team, well-run — OAMI's family homes offer a human, integrated solution for handicapped people (mainly physically disabled, for now) who must leave their own homes.
We visited one of OAMI's family homes. It was our first encounter with the Opera Assistenza Malati Impediti. We bring you to this visit before discussing the organization itself.
Casa Jada sits at Via Pomeria 105 in central Prato, Tuscany. It is one of thirteen homes run by the Opera; it opened in early 1984.
The house is pleasant from outside. Inside, it is genuinely beautiful — renovated, finished, and furnished with both care and practicality. It might seem luxurious, Giuditta (the home's director) explains, anticipating a question she has clearly heard before. But this "family" spends nearly their whole lives in these rooms. It is right, almost necessary for the home's atmosphere, that it be functional, calming, and pleasant.
The mood is calm, and people meet naturally — though life here is not always easy. But then, how many families experience ease and joy all the time?
The mood is calm, and people meet naturally. Still, we sense that living in these homes will not always be simple. But then, how many families experience ease and joy all the time?In the living room we meet the residents: nine handicapped women, mostly with physical disabilities, some fairly independent. (There are also three aides.) They work as they are able around a large table — knitting, sewing dolls, embroidery. Finished pieces line the shelves and decorate the entryway.
The mood is calm, and people meet naturally. We sense that living in these homes is not always easy. But then, how many families find life easy and cheerful all the time?
The organization receives many requests and selects the most vulnerable, most abandoned people — provided they have the capacity to live in small communities and contribute to a family atmosphere and positive coexistence for all.
Outside contact happens often: friends visit, some use the public pool, people go out within their abilities.
We speak with the director and with Sergio.
Sergio is warm and active — a pensioner who comes every day. He is the only man in the house, experienced and capable, and his presence has an obvious balancing effect, both practical and emotional. He is a kind of father figure. (Meeting him calls to mind the enormous untapped potential of so many retirees — seasoned by life and work, efficient — who could provide decisive help. But that is another matter altogether.)
Origins and Organization
Casa Jada was born like the others. A group of volunteers (who also provide home care) determined that the time was right — conditions were far from easy — to open a family home. Often the initial spark is the availability of a house. This Prato home, for example, was donated by a woman in memory of her mother, Jada, who once owned it. Another example: OAMI's family home in Caltanissetta occupies a renovated wing of the old Benedictine Abbey of San Flavia.
The founding group then undertakes fundraising in various ways. In Prato, for instance, they organized two classical ballet performances that raised six million lire. They manage renovation and bureaucratic matters. Finally, the home opens with a celebration.
The family home is the visible part, but the invisible part is vast and essential. There is a group of volunteers and friends committed to sustaining the house in all its needs. The most recent home — for people with severe disabilities near the Santa Lucia parish in Cagliari — is built on the commitment of about a hundred volunteers, including numerous specialist doctors, nurses, craftspeople, and laborers. Each home also has an administrative board and a family council made up of all the residents.
OAMI is a moral entity. Its founder and soul is a priest, Monsignor Enrico Nardi.
The guiding principle is Christianity — the Christianity of service, of charity without which faith is hollow.
Practice is guided by serious organization: the lives of people, especially the handicapped, cannot be managed carelessly or provisionally.
This is why the birth of each new home is long, laborious, and complex. Each must be sustained by its founding and supporting group.
This is why OAMI maintains a training center in San Giovanni Valdarno to prepare assistants — or rather, assistants, since they are typically women.
This is why residents accepted are between 15 and 40 years old and will remain for life: older people, it is feared, would lack the flexibility to integrate and become part of a true "family."
Usually the homes receive no public funding and survive through disability pensions paid by residents, supplemented by money raised by the supporting group.
Two of the homes are designed for holidays.
For now, most homes are for women.
More Than Bread
On the human level, OAMI's family homes answer the most anguished question in the world of disability: what will happen to my child when I am gone? They realize a participation of "normal" people in the lives of disabled people — the key to any genuinely human solution.
The family-home solution as OAMI conceives it avoids the depressing and always somewhat inhuman option of large congregations of disabled people living together. Yet it also provides the stability and security of larger institutions.
The work is driven by religious conviction — the bylaws require that a priest lead it — but religious practice is not required in the homes, nor does it determine admission. In some homes the "family" chooses to share a moment of prayer or reflection each day; in others, they do not. How far removed this is from mandatory Mass, from piety as a tax! And how vividly one feels the living Christianity in Casa Jada, in its small chapel!
When we leave, they embrace us and ask us to return. For these people, human connection, the sharing of life, matter more than bread.
by Sergio Sciascia, 1984