The personal services market - Italy

1.1 Definition and presentation

The personal services sector encompasses all activities aimed at meeting and solving the needs and difficulties that individuals may encounter in the course of their lives with regard to their autonomy (physical and psychological), their ability to access the opportunities offered by the area, and, in general, their social relations. Personal services include all those services that rely on an individual's intellectual or manual efforts. They also include the physical delivery of the service to a person to whom the service is directed, or to someone authorized to receive it on that person's behalf.

In Italy, personal services are developed on three main levels: health care, residential social services and nonresidential social services.

The first category is devoted to services related to people's physical health, includes hospital and health services, the second is devoted to caring for people in specialized buildings and facilities, such as centers for the elderly, while the third is devoted to caring for people through services provided in specialized facilities where, however, there is no overnight stay.

In Italy, beginning in 1970, the personal services sector went through a period of intense reform, which led to the birth of social cooperatives. After decades of collaboration between public administrations and such a business model, the collaborative logic was replaced by a competitive one. The use of competitive bidding as a market regulation tool became widespread, government pressure on the cost side increased, and policies were implemented to foster competition among social and welfare service providers.

The evolution of the social services market has generated significant consequences on the size and strategic behavior of social cooperatives. In particular, the dynamics described above have fostered the growth in size of these enterprises and, in terms of institutional models, these changes have helped to strengthen the presence of social cooperatives.