LGNet Emergency Assistance

The project

"Network of Municipalities for rapid response and services for emergency inclusion in disadvantaged urban areas".

Taking care of people, to take care of cities, this is the mandate entrusted to Italy by Europe with the LGNet Project, co-financed by the European Union with the financing line of the Emergency Measures of the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (FAMI ), managed directly by the European Commission.

Ministry of the Interior (Department for Civil Liberties and Immigration), the system of Italian Municipalities represented by ANCI, Cittalia, ANCI Comunicare and eighteen Municipalities, which have set out to create a system and improve performance in the field of policies of immigration and integration faced with the significant presence of situations of extreme vulnerability in their territories, are the creators of the intervention.

A strategic partnership for the definition of an innovative model that enhances the centrality of territorial welfare in a national and local framework, of operational connections, essential for outlining integration processes, encouraging sharing and awareness of all levels involved, respecting their respective roles and responsibility.

The Municipalities of: Agrigento, Bologna, Bolzano, Caserta, Catania, Florence, Genoa, Latina, Milan, Naples, Palermo, Perugia, Potenza, Rome, Sassari, Taranto, Turin and Trieste are partners of the project, together with ANCI Liguria, Azienda Social Services of Bolzano and Municipal Company for Environmental Protection of Potenza - three instrumental bodies that support urban initiatives in some of the territories - are the real driving force of the project, the territories, the places where the experimentation began.

In the operational framework of the project, despite the limits imposed by the continuing health emergency, thanks to the coordination of the Ministry of the Interior and the institutional and technical support of ANCI and Cittalia, the partner municipalities are interacting with each other, in a unitary framework, exchanging information, tools and experiences to speed up procedures and improve the effectiveness of their interventions.

The objective of the Project is to improve the well-being of the entire community in those territories where there is a high presence of citizens of foreign origin who have not yet reached a sufficient level of integration, through taking charge of even the most complex situations. in order to combat degradation, marginalization and social conflict in the urban areas concerned.

LGNetEA starts from the consideration that the creation of rapid inclusive paths is only possible through the valorisation of the role of local authorities located at the center of local welfare systems, due to the principles of subsidiarity and proximity.

The ability to activate services in an integrated manner constitutes the essential hub of the project.

There are three areas of intervention: 

  1. Finding and preparing temporary homes or dwellings, including light re-functionalization interventions and adoption of measures to support rental and housing independence, to promptly respond to the most serious and complex situations of housing shortage and encourage emergency solutions;
  2. Implementation of psycho-socio-legal interventions aimed at the timely treatment of particularly vulnerable situations found in emergency circumstances in areas at risk of marginalization, through the creation of mobile support and prompt assistance units and One Stop Shops focused on the establishment or strengthening of work teams for the interception and multidisciplinary management of the most difficult situations;
  3. Creation of civic engagement projects in sectors such as landscaping, personal care and territorial safety, to initiate paths towards socio-work autonomy for non-integrated migrants and at the same time contribute to the strengthening of participation and links with local communities.

Some numbers: in the next few months, more than 3.000 users will be taken care of by mobile units and One-stop-shops and directed to care services, more than 500 people will benefit from housing support measures and around 600 projects will be signed and implemented individuals of civic commitment aimed at socio-work integration.

These actions will be accompanied - where the restrictions caused by Covid-19 allow it - by the activation of widespread paths to facilitate integration through the organization of workshop, meeting and awareness-raising activities (community building) in the spaces and nodes of social aggregation of the partner municipalities.

LGNetEA is, therefore, a unique system of its kind, which starts from experience to create a system, in order to activate and strengthen local actions in a logic of interaction with the services and universalistic welfare networks already existing in the territories and act from a complementarity perspective by directing all available resources towards the development of local communities.

Updated: 25/08/2022