What's the issue?
Fragmented legislation affects Italy’s ability to recognise functioning capacities of persons with disabilities, to provide adequate support and to develop effective inclusive policies across sectors, such as in labour market, education, health and social policies. Various attempts undertaken in the past decade to fix these problems have been unsuccessful. In the absence of up-to-date national reference legislation, regions have adopted their own approaches, further contributing to large differences across the country.
Disability assessment is outdated, with a number of definitions of disability in place all based on a medical concept. Through the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, ratified in 2009, Italy is expected to align its definition of disability to ICF standards and harmonise the assessment across systems and regions. The fragmentation of disability assessment is mirrored in a complex and equally fragmented system of social protection for persons with disabilities, with a large number of different tax deductions and welfare benefits, depending on the type and degree of disability and the region in which people live. This system fragmentation results in considerable inequalities across types of disabilities and regions, with inadequatly low benefits in some and undesirable duplication of entitlements in other cases.
Also for these reasons, disability reform is now a priority for the Italian Government, which has obtained the technical support of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support together with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to:
- improve the legal definition of disability so as to comply with the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF);
- increase the capacity of social assistance to reduce poverty and ensure adequate standards of living for people with disabilities.
Project activities
The OECD will develop the project in 4 phases and perform the following activities:
Materials
Inception phase | Kick-off meeting agenda and presentations (EN/IT)
- 6 December 2021
Contacts
If you are interested to learn more about the project or to get involved, please contact Christopher Prinz, OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs and Alessandra Proto, OECD Trento Centre for Local Development.
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