For some decades, it has been known that having lived part or all of one’s childhood or adolescence outside the original family (because of foster care, community, or criminal activity) constitutes an element of heavy social disadvantage.
These young people, called care-leavers, experience difficulty finding a a job or to completing their studies. They also experience less satisfaction with their lives than their peers who lived with their families.
For this reason, many countries have introduced a special protection aiming to strengthen access to employment for care-leavers.
The Italian law about care-leaver employment was introduced in 2022, similarly to the Italian law for the employment of people with disabilities.
This law requires companies to hire at least 7% of their employees from the pool of disabled applicants.
The same law states that in addition to this quota of disabled people, companies with more than 50 employees must hire a certain number of workers with special requirements. For example, 1% of hires must include the children of those who died in war or on the job or sons/daughters of female murder victims.
As of 2022, companies can choose to hire this 1% of workers among people who have certain requirements, including care-leavers.
This is very important information for care-leavers, and most care-leavers do not know anything about this law protecting them.
