Caregivers in Italy: the decline in domestic workers and the digital response of Lebadanti.it

In Italy there are just 8.5 carers for every 100 single people over 60, according to the Family (Net) Work report created by Censis and promoted by Assindatcolf. A fact that helps to understand why, when a parent loses his autonomy, quickly finding a person available to assist him can become a problem for the whole family. The progressive reduction in regular domestic work contributes to making the search even more difficult: in 2025, workers with at least one contribution paid to INPS were 804,464, decreasing for the fourth consecutive year, with around 173 thousand fewer workers than in 2021. Carers now represent 51.3% of the total, overtaking domestic workers for the second consecutive year. It is within this imbalance between the need for assistance and availability of staff that Lebadanti.it operates, a platform developed by the startup WeCare Srl which allows families to search for and contact a caregiver directly, without going through an agency. In July, a new version of the site was put online, which immediately exceeded 6 thousand members including families and carers, with more than 3 thousand profiles of workers available and over 3,500 job offers published.

Free registration and profile creation

"When a family is looking for a caregiver, in most cases they don't have weeks available: the need arises after a hospitalization, a fall or a sudden worsening of a parent's condition and they need to find someone quickly. On the one hand there are families who don't know where to look, on the other there are thousands of available caregivers. Lebadanti.it was created to make them meet more easily", explains Valerio Carboni, CEO and founder of WeCare. The site was born in 2019 as a free bulletin board for caregivers looking for work. In 2025 Carboni founded the innovative startup WeCare Srl together with Reverse Studio and, by joining forces, they decided to transform that web page into a structured platform for the direct meeting between supply and demand which goes online in July 2026. Here carers can register for free, create their own profile and apply for offers, while families can search for available people in their area and contact them through a credit system: you pay only when you contact a carer, not for the simple possibility of searching. The rate starts from 9 euros per contact and does not require any subscription. If the selected caregiver does not respond within 36 hours, the credit used is automatically refunded. "We have chosen to charge for the contact, not the simple possibility of searching. If a person does not respond, for us that contact had no value and the family must be able to recover the credit. It is a simple mechanism, but on such a delicate need transparency and time count a lot", explains Carboni. The digital model of the service also allows the platform to operate even in areas where specialized agencies are less present, a relevant aspect in a market where the need for assistance can arise from one day to the next and from any region or municipality. The first months confirm the existence of demand and the quality of the project. Now Lebadanti.it aims to reach 25 thousand users over the next twelve months.