European Community

a) "Social inclusion for out-of-family children and young people in public childcare" (concluded)

States involved:

Italy, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria and France

Priority Area:

Out-of-Family Children

Project's Description:

The project aims to promote the social inclusion of out-of-family children and young people, in state of abandonment or removal from their birth families for a long period and institutionalised in Public Childcare residential placements. The objective is to promote the development and improvement of alternative family-based childcare options (such as fostering or adoption), in order to guarantee the right of every child to live and grow-up within a family environment, to foster the educational-social-affective relationship and to prevent the condition of social exclusion for those care leavers who have left the childcare protection services.

For this reason, the project intends to develop a programme of exchanging policies and best practices on these topics among Public Authorities, NGOs and Universities committed in Family and Children Affairs in several countries representing different European regions: Western countries (Italy and France), New Member Eastern countries (Latvia) and Candidate Eastern countries (Bulgaria and Romania). Outputs will be expected to produce methodological best practices and political recommendations for social workers and politicians, in order to address services and policies for vulnerable families and children exposed to the risk of abandonment.

The project's overall objective is to foster the development of European social policies aimed at the family and the social inclusion of children who are temporarily or permanently excluded from their own birth family.

The project's overall objective will be pursued through the following specific purposes:

• 1. To stimulate the planning and the improvement of substitutive care options to the institutional placement, aimed at supporting the child's stay in his/her own birth family and/or to facilitate his/her reinsertion in a substitutive family upbringing (de-institutionalization, fostering, guardianship, adoption).
• 2. To promote best practices as programs and services for the de-institutionalisation and prevention of social exclusion for young care leavers, so as to prevent their exploitation on the streets and their homeless life-condition.

For reaching these objectives, the project intends to develop a research, comparison and study programme dedicated to the welfare policies addressed to defend the child's right to live and grow up in a family environment.

b) "Life after institutional care. Equal opportunities and social inclusion for young people: identification and promotion of best practices" (concluded)

States involved:

Italy, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria and France

Priority Area:

Young care leavers at risk of social exclusion

Project's Description:

The overall objective of the project is to promote the development of European social policies aimed at social inclusion and equal opportunities in favour of young care leavers or youngsters who are leaving institutions after a long time spent in residential care, in compliance with the principle of good governance.

This objective will be pursued through the following specific purposes:

1) identification and promotion of effective practices, such as programs, services and pilot projects, aimed at preventing the conditions of marginalisation and improving the participation of stakeholders through coordination mechanisms;

2) creation of a set of social, psychological and economic indicators allowing policy makers, stakeholders and public opinion to recognise the potential effectiveness of services and social programs;

3) promotion of innovative service planning aimed at reducing the negative impact of the risk factors affecting the child once he/ she leaves the care system, as well as preventing inappropriate leaving conditions merely based on reaching adulthood.

In order to achieve the project objectives, the partners intend to implement activities according to a series of methodologies that will refer to the following macro activity areas :

A) Research area: It will focus on the identification of services and actions that characterize paths of social inclusion in favour of young care leavers and on the procedures through which the identified services are monitored;

B) Exchange area: It will represent a shared arena of discussion for the partners and other relevant stakeholders where the adaptability of previously identified good practices throughout different European areas will be encouraged thanks to specific mutual learning activities;

C) Dissemination area: The project foresees specific and different communication methods towards target stakeholders, which in total will form a dissemination strategy.

The partnership is formed by four main categories of partners: qualified University or Research Institutes, Civil Society Organisations, Local Public Authorities and Central Public Authorities.

The composition of the partnership has been conceived with the aim of guaranteeing a multidisciplinary approach to the whole project development and of increasing the capability of the consortium in managing the three main areas of activity planned in the project proposal: research, exchanges and dissemination areas.

c) "Protecting children in child protection system" (ongoing)

States involved:

Italy, Romania, Bulgaria

Priority area:

Children in residential care

Violence against children in residential facilities takes a number of forms. 1) Violence (both physical and verbal) within residential care. Child-to-child violence is often not less significant than that perpetrated by the staff. 2) Unwarranted and/or inappropriate placements: international research overwhelmingly shows that for children under three-five years of age, placements in residential (as opposed to family-based) facilities because has long-term detrimental effects can be qualified as "acts of violence" in themselves. Many minors have been placed in residential care for wrong reasons, constituting unwarranted placements, or remain in institutions for a long time because no viable alternatives exist or because their situation is not periodically reviewed, which shall be considered as an inappropriate recourse to such form of protection.

The specific objective of the project proposal is the empowerment of social care providers (local public authorities and not for profit organisations), in favour of children victims of violence and living in residential care, improving the interventions managed by them that are able to guarantee the right of children in residential care to the protection from any form of violence. The project focus will be on the operators and managers, hence on the professionals that work within these services and on their capacity of detecting, evaluating and facing those forms of violence.

A participatory evaluation tool with a set of indicators needs to be created in order to support local staff to detect forms of violence against children in residential care, hence evaluate effectiveness of present services and consequently activate eventual corrective measures. The project will also create and test in-service training package about the nature, impact of verbal, physical non-contact violence within institutions and inappropriate recourse to residential care in order to increase the capacity of social care providers to prevent and protect these children.

Amici dei Bambini has been working on the topic for many years in a very positive collaboration with European Commission: starting from previous projects and outputs (for instance latest "Guidelines for care-leavers' social inclusion" available at www.childout.org) has started a new project aiming at creating new models of work in order to favour their full inclusion in the society.

The project, called "Supporting life after institutional care" and financed by UE DG Social Affairs under PROGRESS programme, wants to study the introduction of a new professional figure - the social intermediary -able to support young care-leavers (18-22 yrs old) in the medium term (3-5 yrs old) after they left care.

The social experimentation, planned in three major European cities - Sofia, Bucharest and Bologna, would like to analyse the process and the impact of the introduction of this referent person as well as of the initiatives related to this. The objective is to promote original and less expensive initiative in order to support care-leavers' passage towards adult life.

The social intermediary will work not only promoting a symmetrical tutorship with the youth, but as well as "activator" and "intermediary" of local resources available, public and private, in order to support young care-leavers' social inclusion.

The project sees the collaboration among local Municipality and Social Services, Local NGOs and of course Institute of research and Universities. But not only: the collaboration has been established with young care-leavers in those countries where social experimentation will take place, and in particular with the new-born association of young care-leavers in Bologna called "Agevolando" (ndr. Making it easy), member of AiBi's international network Il Melograno.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Italy

"Family abandonment and childhood institutionalization in the South-Eastern World" (concluded)

State involved:

Italy

Priority Area:

Making aware on abandonment and OFC

Project's Description:

The purpose of the project is to inform the Italian public about the topic of juvenile abandonment - an extremely serious matter at international level that is also getting increasingly worse at national and European level. The aim is to sensitise Italy so that it will assume responsible and conscious lines of conduct and take opportune decisions to help in solving the phenomenon, through the following means:

• - The decision to let children at risk of abandonment remain in their own country with their own family of origin, which is socially vulnerable, supporting the family from a distance and guaranteeing it those opportunities of primary welfare (nutritional, educational, social, etc.) which could allow it to avoid the terrible decision to abandon its own child;

• - The decision to start a definitive care process for an orphan child or a child definitely abandoned, through international adoption.

BNL - BNP Paribas

"Observatory on the financial needs of the customers of the NPOs" (ongoing)

State involved:

Italy

Priority Area:

Social inclusion and financial inclusion

Project's Description:

The purpose of the project is to promote the financial inclusion of economically vulnerable people or those who cannot be supported by the bank system, the ‘customers of no-profit system', studying and then developing bank products and services aimed at meeting their special needs and educating them in credit-related matters.

Focus is on:

• - Couples involved in international adoption: supporting them financially in the costs they shall face.

International adoption is a care action in the interest of an abandoned minor, but is implies costs which can vary depending on the authorized body and the selected country involved. Thus, we will check the incidence of the economic factor in the care action.

In particular, the study will highlight the role of the financial aspect within adoption, the special needs of the couple implied in the long adoption process but also the couple's needs in the first 2 years with the adopted child. We will also assess the degree of satisfaction of some financial products, if any.

• - The over 18 (care leavers), i.e. young adults who have not been taken into care by any family but have grown up in public institutes, and are now obliged to start an independent life (minors in foster families, or minors in residential care facilities).

Thus, we will identify and assess the actions and services, carried out by public and/or private institutions, which support the process of the social reinsertion of these young care leavers. In addition, we will define a ‘map of the costs' which these actions entail, and eventually identify the need, including financial ones, of these care leavers.