Developing foster care: what needs to change and what is needed to achieve it

The history of Italian child welfare shows that solutions have been based traditionally on the support provided by both institutions and families. For a long time, placement in an institutional setting was considered the ideal solution for children in care but the implementation of Law 184/1983 altered that situationby promoting new forms of family care and residential educational facilities.The child protection system was challenged to overhaul policies based on charitable contributions and institutional provision, and provide more family-based care. There is no question that child protection in Italy (including the justice system for young people in conflict with the law) has changed a great deal. However, the difficulties in moving from ideal models of foster care to different “real-life” forms, tailored to the needs and problems of individuals and families, are still reflected today in the discrepancies between the framework envisaged by the law and its actual implementation, resulting in very diverse outcomes. In this chapter, therefore, we take stock of the present situation but do not dwell on historical, sociological or statistical analysis. We proceed in five steps: 1. We provide a brief summary of the legislative framework in Italy together with a systematic and dynamic interpretation of this legal context, i.e. one that follows the spirit, rather than the letter, of the law. 2. We look at statistical trends in foster care since the introduction of Law 184/1983. 3. We apply the perspective of caregiving as an “ecosystem” and draw on the Secure Base model (Schofield and Beek, 2014b) to show how the care system can be improved. 4. We introduce two practice models – “mild adoption”,1 already piloted in one region of Italy, and a “clinical-practical” model of learning – as tools to promote the further development of forms of foster care that are efficient and respectful of everyone concerned. 5. We finally comment on opportunities and obstacles arising from an increased use of foster care for young people in conflict with the law.