Who will take care of the elderly in Italy? maybe robots

CARPI, Italy – The older woman asked to be told a story.

“Excellent choice”, replied the little robot, lying like a nonchalant professor on the bench in the classroom, gesturing for him to listen carefully.

The woman leaned towards the robot, her forehead nearly touching the smooth plastic head.

“Once upon a time”, the robot started a story and, when it was finished, asked what job the protagonist had.

“Pastor”, Bona Poli, 85, meekly replied.

The robot didn’t hear very well.

Poli got up from his chair and raised his voice.

“Shepherd!” he shouted.

“Great,” said the robot, gesturing awkwardly.

“Have memory like a computer.”

The scene could have the dystopian undertone of “what could go wrong?” of science fiction at a time when both the promises and dangers of artificial intelligence are taking on greater significance.

But for exhausted healthcare workers who attended a recent rally in Carpi, a beautiful city in Italy’s most innovative region in aged care, it pointed to a not-too-distant future where humanoids could help declining families share the burden of keep stimulated, active and healthy to the elderly population of the Western world.

“Squat down and stretch,” recommended Nao, the French-made robot, as he stood up and guided the posture exercises.

“Let’s move our arms and raise them.”

Most of the women in the room watched, some amused, some wary, but all eager to know how the new technology could help them care for their elderly relatives.

Together, they listened to the robot’s calm, automated voice and offered their real-world take on a focus group organized by a non-profit advocacy group representing so-called family caregivers.

The goal was help programmers from robots to designing a more attractive and useful machine that could one day lighten the load for increasingly overwhelmed Italian families.

Italy, which has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe, is bracing itself for a demographic explosion of the elderly.

Of the nearly 60 million Italians, more than seven million they are over 75 years old.

And 3.8 million consider themselves not self-sufficient.

Illnesses such as dementia and chronic illnesses take their toll on healthcare systems and families.

“The revolution,” said Olimpia Pino, professor of psychology at the University of Parma, who conceived the robot project, is that a “social robot could help in treatment.”

Advances in artificial intelligence would only make robots more responsive, he noted, making people older more self-sufficient for longer and provide more relief to healthcare workers.

“We must all look for all possible solutions, in this case technological ones,” Loredana Ligabue, president of Non solo elderly, a defense group for caregivers, explained to the participants.

“We saw the great fear of being left alone.”

Robots are already interacting with the elderly in Japan and have been used in nursing homes across the United States.

But in Italy, the prototype is the latest attempt to recreate an echo of the traditional family structure that kept older Italians at home.

The Italy of the popular imagination, where multigenerational families gather around the table on Sundays and live happily under the same roof, is shaken by important demographic winds against.

Changes

Low birth rates and the flight of many young adults in search of economic opportunities abroad have reduced the number of potential carers.

Those who take on the burden of care are usually women, which distinguishes them from the working population, is a ldisaster for the economy and, according to experts, further reduces birth rates.

However, home care remains a central element of the notion of aging in a country where nursing homes exist, but Italians prefer to find ways to keep their elderly relatives with them.

For decades, Italy has avoided serious reform of its long-term care sector by filling the void with cheap and often taken illegallymany of them from post-Soviet Eastern Europe, and particularly from Ukraine.

“This is the pillar of long-term care in this country,” said Giovanni Lamura, director of Italy’s leading center for socioeconomic research on ageing.

“Without this, the whole system would collapse.”

In January, the unions representing the legal carers, as the workers are called here, were awarded a salary increase that amounted to about 145 euros, or more than 150 dollars, a month for home care.

Italians say their salaries and pensions haven’t kept up, forcing many to Take care of them of care.

As regards family assistants, Italy has been offering public benefits for decades to a single family member who takes care of a seriously ill person.

By the end of the year, paid leave and other types of support will be able to be shared within a family, which basically means more men will be able to help.

In Emilia-Romagna, the region that includes Carpi, it is also expected to generate a workforce of carers with experience in caring for their family members who, eventually, when their loved ones die, can be hired to care for others. .

“There’s a huge demand”, commented Ligabue.

Last week, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni welcomed the passage of a new law aimed at streamlining access to services for the elderly and gaining greater government commitment to the growing long-term care sector.

However, the law does not provide specific support measures for family caregivers.

Alessandra Locatelli, Italy’s disability minister, explained that the government did not want to prioritize Italians caring for older relatives over those caring for younger disabled people.

He said he expected a new measure at the end of the year to offer tax breaks and other benefits to “resident caregiver relatives” for “all kinds of people who are not self-sufficient.”

But the Carpi meeting made it clear that many Italians don’t necessarily live with their parents and grandparents they care for.

Some of those women are already looking beyond the government for help: the machines.

As Nao, the French robot who adopts the correct posture, made jerky movements across the table, Leonardo Saponaro, the psychology student who led the discussion group and whose grandfather suffered from dementia outside Rome, explained that the robot was “not a substitute for socializing with other people.”

“However, it can be a companion,” he concluded.

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