Social work

The twenty-fourth entry is l’inserimento in comunità, and the trap sits in the word an English reader will feel safest with. In ordinary Italian la comunità is the community, exactly as it looks. Inside this service it is not an abstraction at all but a building with beds in it. Una comunità per minori is a children’s home, una comunità alloggio a small staffed house, una comunità terapeutica a residential unit for treatment, and andare in comunità, said of a child, means being taken into residential care. So l’inserimento in comunità is a placement into an institution, which is why it sits in this list beside the last resorts. English built its own vocabulary around the opposite move: « community care », « care in the community » and « a community placement » all describe keeping somebody out of an institution and among ordinary neighbours. Two services, two histories, one shared word pointing in opposite directions — and a translator who quietly leaves comunità as « community » reverses the meaning of the file.