Editorial guides
Practical articles, checklists and explanations built around Italian care homes, urgent placement, waiting lists and home-care decisions.
Featured guide
The word you use decides which waiting list you join, what the state pays, and whether a nurse is on site. Here is what each Italian term actually means, and the two questions that cut through the terminology.
The visit is over and you know your parent cannot manage alone another winter — and you live abroad. What to start before you leave, what can be done from another country, and why September is the month that decides how the winter goes.
A call from Italy, a discharge date in five days, and you are in London, New York or Sydney. What can actually be arranged from a distance: dimissioni protette, the ward's social worker, the RSA application route, and a badante as an interim bridge.
The brother in Italy is exhausted and wants it settled. You are 2,000 km away, you see it twice a year, and whatever you say lands as interference. Both of you are right, which is why these arguments never resolve on their own. No child has authority over the others under Italian law — and the distance creates a second problem nobody names: who can actually sign. Here is how to split the work so the person abroad stops being a spectator.
What amministratore di sostegno means, how it differs from a simple power of attorney, when a family needs one, and how to start the process from abroad.
What the ISEE is, why it matters even if you live abroad, how it is calculated, and how to get one done for a parent in Italy without being there in person.
It is paid regardless of income or assets, it is not means-tested, and it does not depend on the family's finances. Yet families managing care from abroad routinely never claim it — usually because nobody told them it exists.
You cannot walk the corridors from another country, so you have to make the phone do the work. These are the questions that separate homes, the documents to ask for, and the one visit that tells you more than any brochure — even if someone else makes it.
Italy has dedicated dementia units inside ordinary care homes, and they are the difference between a parent who is settled and one who is sedated. They are also scarce, regionally funded, and almost never offered unless you ask by name.
A badante costs less than a care home and keeps your parent at home — until the night shifts, the lifting or the dementia make it unsafe. Here is what each really costs, what you take on as an employer, and the four signals that the middle option has ended.
Most read
The word you use decides which waiting list you join, what the state pays, and whether a nurse is on site. Here is what each Italian term actually means, and the two questions that cut through the terminology.
Monthly fees for RSA and rest homes across Italy, what the fee includes, the public subsidies that exist, and how to pay from abroad.
A practical, step-by-step guide for sons and daughters in the US, UK, Canada or Australia who need to arrange residential care for a parent in Italy.
