The enhanced school model is appealing because it integrates children with severe handicaps into the regular elementary school setting and brings in not just a support teacher, but also the professionals best equipped to meet these children's educational and practical needs. Yet it runs up against a hard reality of Italian society: school manages school, and social services manage social services. The risk is ending up with only a support teacher—and no answers to concrete questions. Who takes him to the bathroom? Who changes him? What does he do while the class is learning to calculate the area of a circle? Integration, yes—but without the capacity to address his educational, rehabilitative, and care needs. Meanwhile, the Social-Educational Center for Young Children, which does respond well to a child's educational and care needs, seems to surrender any hope of schooling a severely handicapped child. It denies him integration, shared moments, and activities alongside peers his own age. Read also: A School Made to Measure
This is why the reality of Zingonia strikes us as both intelligent and tailored to need. Intelligent because it houses two separate models—enhanced school and social-educational center—under one roof, breaking free from the "school only" or "social services only" mentality. It allows institutions and agencies, perhaps unused to collaboration, to work together toward the same goal. And tailored because it gives each child the professionals, the setting, and the services that truly match his specific needs.
- Mariangela Bertolini, 1998