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This paper examines the professional development work carried out with the Family Centres (Centri per le Famiglie) of Sardinia, treating active ageing as a field for piloting place-based practices of adult education and lifelong learning. From an ecological and community-oriented perspective, Family Centres are construed not only as parenting-support services, but also as proximity-based social systems with the potential to activate intergenerational mechanisms, prevent loneliness, and tackle inequalities (including digital inequalities), in line with a conception of lifelong learning distributed across the life course.

The theoretical framework integrates: (a) the lifelong learning tradition as a paradigm of citizenship, capability enhancement, and participation; (b) active ageing studies, interpreted here not in a narrowly productivist sense but as a multidimensional construct (health, participation, security, social relations, and agency); (c) scholarship on the digital divide and digital inclusion in later life, with attention to access, competence, meaningful use, and social mediation; and (d) the educational approach of problem-posing education, which makes it possible to valorise practitioners’ existing competences while integrating them with trainers’ academic knowledge, with trainers acting as facilitators in fostering critical consciousness regarding problems and potential solutions.

The action research adopted a sequential multi-method design (documentary–comparative and translational) and comprised two phases. In Phase 1, a comparative analysis was conducted of good-practice cases collected within the PNRR Age-It project by the LEAA cross-cutting Board, using a standardised template that combines structured variables (target groups, settings, scale, recruitment, methodologies, timelines, co-design, monitoring, evaluation) with reflexive notes, with the aim of constructing an inter-case matrix. In the subsequent phase, findings were translated into a training pathway for practitioners working in Sardinia’s Family Centres, structured around thematic sessions, supported project work, and follow-up activities, in accordance with a logic of capacity building, contextual adaptation, and territorial transferability.

The guiding research question is as follows: how, and under what conditions, can a comparative analysis of good practices in active ageing be translated into a transferable training dispositif for proximity-based local services, capable of supporting integrated planning, inclusion, and participation? Accordingly, the paper pursues a twofold objective: (1) to identify recurring patterns and conditions for adaptability/replicability across the practices analysed; and (2) to formalise an analytical–operational model for practitioner training oriented towards place-based co-design and collaborative governance.

The paper is situated within the framework of Italy’s recent reform of policies for older persons (Law 33/2023; Legislative Decree 29/2024), which explicitly foregrounds dignity, autonomy, social inclusion, active ageing, and the prevention of frailty, while strengthening the integration of social, health, and socio-health interventions, including through territorial and community-based approaches. In particular, the Decree introduces provisions that are salient for this study (CIPA and the National Plan, frailty prevention, digital facilitation, transversal digital competences, community services, and service integration). In the Sardinian context, the recent establishment of the Regional Working Group on Active Ageing and the involvement of institutional actors, socio-health districts, and PLUS territorial areas further underscore the relevance of a training dispositif oriented towards collaborative governance and the networking of practices.