Welcoming Adults

In order to listen to and welcome in all those people asking for help, whether the request comes from public institutions or directly from people who find themselves in difficult or distressing situations, in 1990 the Service for Welcoming Adults was set up.

By getting to know such people, it is possible to assess their needs and arrive at the best response by welcoming them into family homes, families, emergency reception centres or other facilities.
The period of welcome can be of different lengths. In general, a short period of welcome is requested to support families in difficulty, for example if they have a child with a mental disorder, also extending this welcome to more than one person at a time, such as a mother and her children. In recent years the service has been particularly active in responding to emergency situations for people with mental disorders and to the problems encountered by non-EU migrants.

There are a great many different, often complex requests for help and the Service for Welcoming Adults attempts to respond to each one of these promptly and effectively. The service is aided in this by the ever more widespread network of local welcoming facilities. Once the planning stage for the service was completed, we set about gathering all the resources available to set it up, through working in partnership with public institutions and private entities operating locally or across the province or region. These included the social services, the various police authorities, SIMAP, Caritas, mother and child help centres, shelters for the abused, family centres, etc..
This was our way of bringing together as many resources as possible to provide the best response to those in need.