In Italy, residential care facilities, active at 31st December 2015, were 12,828, with 390,689 beds (6.4 for every 1,000 residents). The majority of the residential care facilities provided both social and health care services, 75% of beds. They mainly provide services to non-independent elderly. The rest of the facilities (25%) provided social care only.
The relevant geographical differences remained unchanged from the previous year: 64% of all residential care beds were located in the regions of the North area, with a rate of 9 beds for every 1,000 residents.
In the South area there were only 3 beds per thousand residents.
The greatest supply of both health and social residential care services was recorded in the North, with 8 beds for every 1,000 residents versus 2 beds per thousand residents in the South.
The residential care recipients were 383 thousand. Around 288 thousand of them were elderly people aged 65 and over (75%), more than 73 thousand were adults aged between 18 and 64 (19%), while more than 21 thousand were minors aged under 18 (6%). Three elderly recipients of four were aged over 80, and were mainly non independent and women.