Carla is sixty-five. She has lived in the residential home run by Il Carro in Rome for about twenty years, after her family could no longer care for her as she needed. Carla is outgoing, quick-witted, and has a sharp memory. When you run into her—even in a crowd—the greeting is a ritual, personal and exclusive. She catches you up on news, points out her clothing, her accessories. Often she runs through the names of relatives who aren't present, people she wants to pass along her regards to. Sometimes she speaks of family members who have passed, always with great and immense affection. All the while, she holds your hand until the ritual is complete.
Lately, these greetings carry new weight. They've become her way of announcing something momentous: her retirement. Carla has stepped away from her main activity outside the home—a rehabilitation center where she had worked for at least forty years. With a broad smile, she tells nearly everyone she meets about this milestone, this significant threshold in her life that puts her on equal footing with so many others who have crossed it. The fact that she speaks of it with joy matters. For many people like her, the day program offers an escape from an otherwise domestic routine, and its loss can trigger depression—much as it does for people without disabilities when they stop working, even if they've long anticipated it. Carla, I think, takes comfort in knowing she can spend more time with her housemates, filling her days in varied ways, in a place built on the principle of family-like accompaniment.
Il Carro has been operating for twenty-eight years—a residential home, a community on a small rural property within a protected area on the outskirts of Rome. Ten people with intellectual disabilities live here, most with little to no autonomy. A team of professionals supports them: two care workers, an assistant, and a social worker, Daniela Fioravanti. What sets Il Carro apart is the presence of a family unit living on the same property, integrated into community life. That family presence has created—and continues to create—a genuinely family-like atmosphere, essential to daily care, to the growth of residents, and to their overall wellbeing.
Aging is becoming a new experience, and the community is preparing for another phase in the lives of its residents
The people with disabilities welcomed into this community have come from families who understood—with varying degrees of difficulty—that their adult children could grow and flourish apart from them. They found a home where they could develop their capacities, experience growth, and be supported with care as they age. And yes, for many of them, old age is now a new frontier. The care team is beginning to sense that shift and is preparing itself for another phase entirely in the lives of those they serve.
Daniela Fioravanti describes the effects aging has already brought: disrupted nighttime sleep, reduced mobility, diminished attention span, early signs of dementia. Recognizing these changes, the team sought specialized training. Il Carro was a pioneer in Rome twenty-eight years ago, opening one of the first non-institutional homes for adults with intellectual disabilities. Now it faces a new frontier—one without protocol, without peer networks, without guidance from services—as life, mercifully, lengthens. The concern is clear: how to sustain the best possible quality of life for each person as they age, and how to manage the medical complexities that may arise.
That concern found a response. Fioravanti reached out to a neuropsychiatrist from Anffas, Dr. Dili, who made herself available to the care team. After an initial session on aging in general, each staff member had the chance to discuss specific concerns about the residents in their care. Every worker knows that the aging of those they support is a new condition to adapt to. Fioravanti emphasizes that "resilience must be the watchword—not just for those of us doing this work, but for the people with disabilities too." Resilience: the capacity to face life's trials by reorganizing oneself, by holding onto who you are, perhaps discovering parts of yourself that were hidden until now.
No protocols exist yet. No guidelines. What's clear is that this is a new complexity that demands attention and flexibility. Even public services lack awareness of this shift in the landscape of disability. That blindness shows in rigid rules—for instance, only the goodwill of public workers makes monitoring possible for people now classified as elderly. And who seem, incredibly, able to leave their disability behind once they turn sixty-five.