The conflict between Rome Capital and the Lazio Region is becoming increasingly bitter regarding the assistance of severely disabled adults, mostly falling within the autistic spectrum. In December 2023, Pisana published a resolution which establishes, in extreme summary, that for 89 patients it is necessary to reformulate the type of service and economic coverage, which until now has been borne by the Region. From 1 January 2025 it has been decided that the social part will deal with it exclusively, therefore the Municipalities (in addition to Rome, there are Civitavecchia and Fiano Romano). A “drain” that will weigh on local budgets, which are not sufficiently equipped.
All rights denied to autistic children in Lazio
The Region’s decision on assistance to the severely disabled
The story, as mentioned, begins at the end of last year. From the regional department for social policies comes the input to restore order to the services relating to severely disabled adults, interrupting the disbursement of funds and the full taking over by the local health authorities, the local health authorities. A change of direction that has alarmed the parents of the users, who until now have been placed in individual programs that see them welcomed in family homes and not, fortunately, in RSAs and specialized institutions of various kinds. Alarmed enough to appeal to the TAR, challenging the regional resolutions on which the administrative judges of Lazio will express their opinion on 9 July.
The letter from Roma Capitale
In recent months, the Municipality of Rome and the Lazio Region have discussed matters, but the outcome has not been positive. So much so that on May 27th a letter was sent from Barbara Funari’s social policies department, addressed to her counterpart Massimiliano Maselli, to the regional health and social inclusion directorate and to the three city local health authorities, in which it is put in black and white that “this Administration to today he is not the owner nor is he in charge of the people included in the 2023 council resolution, whose residential and semi-residential paths were arranged by the Local Health Authorities 1, 2 and 3, presumably in lack of places in the socio-health structures, with their own, autonomous measures and without any prior sharing of the aforementioned insertions with this Department/Department and with the Municipalities”.
More diagnoses, more therapies. This is how the autism business grows
Goodbye to the health budget
But, despite this premise, the director of human services, the director of the department and councilor Funari herself reiterated the Municipality’s willingness to keep a table open for the creation of a “health budget”, i.e. a partnership between the Region and Campidoglio for the subsidy of services dedicated to disabilities: “This path still seems today, to the writer, the most correct and protective towards the people concerned – we read in the letter -, also in the context of the recent Framework Law on Disability, which its fulcrum in the user’s personalized and participatory life project”. The Region, however, responded “sparingly”: “Our proposal was deemed unviable by the management of the Lazio Region”. And this is also confirmed by an amendment, signed by the regional councilors Maselli and Righini.
“The funds allocated by the Region are not enough”
The amendment, which adds an article to bill 155 of 2024 on the recognition of off-balance sheet debts, provides for the disbursement of 580 thousand euros in favor of Roma Capitale to guarantee the continuity of assistance services to people with disabilities, falling within the spectrum autistic person, to be covered until the end of 2024. A figure which, explains the municipal councilor Barbara Funari, is completely insufficient: “It is a third of what would be needed – she states – considering that the cost of assistance is around 3 million euros a year and from July to December we quantified it at just over 1 million and 200 thousand euros. The problem will arise again from 1 January 2025, which is why we are trying to find funds from the budget adjustment that will be discussed in. July”.
Funari: “We hope to find resources for 2025”
On the Region’s decision, then, the councilor does not mince words: “An unhelpful operation on the part of the Region – she continues – which gives exclusively social relevance to assistance, which cannot be done for us. Unfortunately, the technical tables have given this type of outcome, which will be a problem not only for the families of disabled adults, however, we must and want to deal with them responsibly people with severe autism. Then we’ll see later. Unfortunately, it must be said that the hope for a health budget has failed.”
Even the president of the social commission in the Capitol enters straight into the topic: “Rome will not leave these people alone, unlike what the Region has done – underlines the PD councilor -. Evidently for some, disability is more of a burden to be unloaded than more. We work to guarantee the rights of these people. The regional amendment is an insult to our intelligence, because those funds are absolutely not sufficient to cover services until the end of the year”.
