Family support as a working style in child protection in Italy: A comparative study on social workers' child welfare attitudes

Abstract

Comparative studies on child protection decision-making highlight the implications and determinants of differences in child welfare systems internationally and reinforce discussions regarding child protection practices and family support when a child is exposed to inadequate parental care. To date, Italian child protection studies have highlighted a system characterised by a strong degree of variability related to the absence of practices shared nationally. Differently, this comparative study focuses more on similarities within the Italian context, seeking to understand how they influence practices. The opinions of 188 Italian social workers with respect to the substantiation of maltreatment, risk assessment and intervention recommendations were compared with the results of a recent study involving practitioners in Israel, Northern Ireland, Spain and the Netherlands. The main outcomes show that Italian social workers prefer a family support orientation, meaning that children are usually removed from their home only if necessary and generally with the aim of reunification with their families. The study also reveals that Italian professionals are more in favour of residential care than foster care.

The Placement of Children in Need of Out-of-Home Care: Forms of Care and Differences in Attachment Security and Behavioral Problems in the Italian Context

“…This is why "sometimes foster parents are warned not to commit to children placed in their care because of the inherent instability of foster care" and they may fail "to invest in a child for whom they care" (see [17], p. 517). Such a situation is particularly relevant in contexts such as that of Italy, where social workers prefer that children are removed from their home only when necessary and with the aim of reunification with the birth family; this results in concerns about the foster care process, probably due to the idea that it may not sufficiently preserve children's relationships with their biological parents and relatives [18]. To overcome the problems associated with long-term foster care, which can lead to situations of fragility and vulnerability in foster children over time (for example, when they reach the age of 18, they no longer have legal protection), one possible solution is to transform foster care into open adoption, which, as mentioned above, aims to maintain children's relational and emotional contact with their biological parents and family in the postadoption period after having experienced it during the foster care period.…”