Age and Ageing in the Italian Perspective of the Responsible Welfare

Over the years, the politics of European countries has slowly integrated the theories of Successful Ageing (Rowe & Khan, 1997) and Active Ageing (Boudiny, 2013) into its lines of action. The concept of “old age”, according to which old people need assistance, has thus been replaced with the concept of “ageing” understood as «a permanent process that does not begin at the age of 60» (UNFPA & Help Age International, 2012, p. 11) and which recognizes the “full personal and social development” of the elderly within society (Ardigò, 1992; Piccoli, 2010). If ageing is a natural process, the elderly must not be understood only as a bearer of needs but as a «fundamental actor in determining both the present and the future of [...] society» (Piccoli, 2010, p.245). Therefore, if elderly people experience social exclusion and loneliness, this is not due to age but to cultural, social and environmental barriers (CNB, 2006; Johnson, 2002; Lloyd-Sherlock, 2004). Society must support the biological ageing process, rediscovering the old person in his/her «relational subjectivity and essential references to the social and cultural structure» (Cesareo cited in Belardinelli, 2009, p.241).

The present study aims to introduce the Italian perspective of Responsible Welfare (hereinafter RW) applied to ageing policy. It overcomes both the neo-liberal horizon of individual responsibility and the social-democratic one of state responsibility, focusing on the social responsibility, shared among all the actors who play an active role in the welfare system (Cesareo & Pavesi, 2019). The RW perspective offers a method of definition-management-evaluation of policies and services that meets the new approach of Healthy Ageing (UN Decade, 2022), introducing the enabling activation and the shared integration as a parameter of the quality of life of all citizens, precisely because how one lives today determines how one ages tomorrow.