The therapeutic community “Villa Renata” was found in 1984, thanks to Venice Councillorship which had bought the facility and devolved upon a local Association of drug addict people families to manage it. Then, Villa Renata became a facility for first care, with a six months programme to rehabilitate the people who need assistance for addiction problems.

In 1988 Villa Renata founded the namesake social cooperative society, in order to manage the facilities in a better way: the fellow-members of the cooperative were doctors, practitioners, psychologists, educators and professionals who worked in the therapeutic community.

Today the social enterprise “Villa Renata” manages different therapeutic communities (for adult people, for mothers with children, for people in social and work reintegration).
The therapeutic communities hosts about 50 people, male and female, despatched from the local public health departments, in particular from the services for drug addiction, located in different regions of Italy.

Villa Renata manages also different projects, collaborating with several Research Institutes at European level (IREFREA – Institute of European Research on the Risk Factors in Childhood and Adolescence; FESU – European Forum for Urban Safety; etc.).

Since 1998 Villa Renata (with its president, Dr. Paolo Stocco) has been the Coordinator member of EURO-TC – European Treatment Centers for Drug  Addiction, coordinating researches on the topic of quality issues in the therapeutic communities, at European level.

From 1996 to 2000 Villa Renata collaborated with an international research group of ERIT financed by the Direction Générale V de la Commission Européen : Système européen pour une démarche de qualité des Communauté Thérapeutiques, to evaluate the quality of therapeutic communities in Europe.

From 2003 to 2005 Villa Renata coordinated a Veneto Region Project called: PROVAID: Veneto Region Project for Integrated Assistance for Substance Addicted Women with Children, that produced the Regional Guidelines for the integrated assistance to addict mothers with children, published on: http://www.villarenata.org/images/PROVAID.pdf  

From 2006 to 2008 it was Coordinator of the second edition of the PROVAID Regional project, which includes a regional research on the organizational manners of the Public Addiction Services about the issue of integrated assistance for addicted women with children.

From 2006 to 2008 it has been the Italian Partner and Coordinator of the European Project “Peer Drive Clean!”, implemented by Mistel-Spi Forschung on the issue of safe driving (in particular, driving without alcohol or psyco-active substance effects) for young people aged 18-25 years old.