Economic sustainability of a social farm with young autistic people

Young people with autism who finish the training school, in most case, cannot count on support or projects for their integration into the world of work, because it is believed that autism involves the inability to develop skills. But until now, the social projects for autism have focused mainly on young people of school age so that you do not have a clear perception of the disease in adulthood. The inclusion of adolescents with autism in social farms has achieved excellent results and this, in recent years, has led to the development of experimental projects to promote job placement for autistic adults in the agricultural sector. The development of relational and organizational skills by adolescents with autism included in social farms, has matured the idea that these people may be able to work producing goods and services with economic goals. Agricultural work seems to be the best one to help autistic people to break down the wall of isolation. In this context, through a case study of Umbria and the experience gained in other Italian regions, the paper analyzes the conditions necessary to achieve economic sustainability of a social farm for young people with autism. The objective is to contribute to plan a social farm that is also an economic model of reference for other similar experiences. For this purpose we use the tools of solidarity economy going beyond the horticultural therapy, or hippotherapy, which are disciplines widely used in therapeutic protocols. The issues analyzed concern the following contexts: organizational (skills acquisition, distribution of roles, creation of mixed groups), productive (choice of production methods, range of goods and services offered), commercial (selling arrangements based on the values of relationship lasting and continuous), relational and institutional (interaction with the local population, public awareness on the value of production, expansion of constructive cooperation on the association ANGSA Umbria). Finally, some reflections are conducted on the need to integrate the various policies in view of the new programming on Rural Development 2014-2020, which could seriously contribute to the sustainable inclusion into the world of agricultural work of young autistic people.