by Elisabetta Carra'
THEORETICAL FRAMING
In Italy, over the last decade the percentage of out-of-home children and youths is growing,... more
THEORETICAL FRAMING
In Italy, over the last decade the percentage of out-of-home children and youths is growing, and this makes increasingly urgent to assess the quality of services meeting this important social problem. Foster care is spreading rapidly, but there are still many children housed in residential facilities. Recently, reflection on residential care quality has greatly developed, at national and international level.
This intervention presents the results of a research-assessment on residential care facilities for children and youths in a region of Northern Italy (Lombardy), taking into account four dimensions: efficiency, effectiveness, participation in planning and intervention, empowerment of children and youths and their family relationships. Their emerging effect is defined as "relational quality".
HYPOTHESIS
A broad examination of international literature shows that the response to children’s needs is as much more effective as children themselves and their families take an active role in the intervention, with a network approach that connects all services having competence over the cases. The purpose of this research is to verify the effectiveness of such a network, which in Italy involves residential care facilities and social services, with the latter in charge of referring the minors to residential care facilities and follow their families.
METHODOLOGY
Wecarried out 187 online self-report interviews to coordinators of residential care facilities; 30 face-to-face semi-structured interviews to social workers; 97 self-report questionnaires to minors above 10 yrs living in children homes.
RESULTS
A) efficiency: residential care facilities are generally good, while social services resources often appear insufficient to ensure an adequate work with birth families;
B) effectiveness: children and youths’ wellbeing in residential care facilities is high, but generally they move from one facility to another never returning to their birth family;
C) participative approach: rather lacking in terms of the involvement of children and their families at different path stages;
D) empowerment: the most critical element is the lack of attention devoted to working with birth families.
The application of the assessment frame of relational quality enabled to highlight strengths and weaknesses of the network responding to the needs of out-of-home children and youths.
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