Supportive shared living for adults with develomental disabilities: the Canadian experience. Comparative legal framework and fiscal incentives

Abstract

The supportive shared living is a way to respond to housing and daily assistance needs experienced by adults with developmental disabilities, who cannot live independently but who want to become independent of their families. These programs are an alternative solution to nursing homes that provide professional care, with lower cost and interesting outcomes in terms of integration and social cohesion. This program coordinates the efforts of public and private institutions and integrates economic and fiscal elements that increase its viability in situations of absence of family kinship. This experience is well established in some provinces of Canada such as British Columbia, where it has been developing since the eighties and whose most relevant notes will be presented in this work. The Canadian model can inspire responses in a context such as the Span- ish one, where foster care for adults lacks a common framework and has not been consolidated as a real alternative to residential care. The second part of this work is devoted to analyzing the legal framework of the different initiatives that exist in the field of foster care of adults in Spain and to make a comparison of its legal, economic and fiscal elements with the Canadian program.