Narrare l’esperienza professionale di persone con la Sindrome di Down

Abstract

The work experience allows to broaden the range of tools (such as knowledge, behaviors and
skills) that each individual can dispose of to increase their self-determination and calls, in
everyone, the possibility of "believing" that the other has skills that they wait to emerge and to
be empowered, in order to develop a multifaceted identity in their Life Project. Work inclusion
must be embodied in good practices that build concrete possibilities to carry out work projects
that are "real" and "realistic". Often it is the Associations that in the national context plan and
implement social and work inclusion interventions. Among these, the project, promoted by the
Italian Association of Down People, entitled "Who finds a job finds a treasure" and funded by
the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies, is particularly interesting. The article aims to explore
the narratives of the professional stories and professional projects of twenty young adults with
Down syndrome in the Italian context. Specifically, it was decided to carry out an exploratory
study starting from the epistemological and methodological paradigm of the Grounded Theory
(Glaser & Strauss, 1967) and to carry out the qualitative analysis of the data using NVIVO software(
Richards, 1999). We also propose a reading of the data that emerged in the light of the
quality of life perspective.