A register to map the fostering of children in family homes
The Roccella-Nordio bill was approved by the House on 21 October, now it is in the Senate
Approved in the Chamber of Deputies on 21 October with 131 votes in favour, none against and no abstentions, the Roccella-Nordio bill on the protection of minors in foster care intervenes with three articles on monitoring, transparency and control of removal measures, with the aim of avoiding long stays in institutions and foster care without a deadline. Not only: the government's intentions also include the monitoring of hetero-familiar foster care, a mapping that will put an end to the absence of data on children and young people who are sent to foster homes by order of the judicial authorities. A cone of shadow in which minors removed from their mothers with sentences based on so-called parental alienation also end up (see article opposite). The heart of the reform is the establishment of a double register: one of 'public and private care institutions, however named, of family-type communities and foster families' at the Department for Family Policies, to monitor the use of foster care for minors temporarily deprived of a suitable environment and to prevent improper placements. Another register, this time 'of minors placed in family-type communities or public or private care institutions, however named, or with foster families' will instead be set up at each Juvenile Court and ordinary Court. This register shall contain, inter alia, the date and details of the measure of placement in a community or fostering to a family, specifying on the basis of which case it is concerned and indicating the foster family or the family-type community or the public or private care institution, however named, where the child was placed.
The aim is to build a unified framework of proceedings, to reduce information asymmetries between judicial offices and to strengthen the supervision of the outcomes of measures. The bill heals the current regulatory vacuum where only Law 184/1983 operates, which merely provides for the obligation of public or private care institutions and family-type communities to transmit every six months to the public prosecutor at the Juvenile Court of the place where they are located, the list of all minors placed with them. xAmong the new features is also the establishment at the Department for Family Policies of the National Observatory on Institutions, Communities and Foster Families, with the task of analysing and reporting any improper institutionalisation, as well as promoting inspections at the competent authorities. The Observatory will also have to draw up by 30 June each year a report to the delegated political authority, to be forwarded to Parliament, which will also take into account the contributions of the other thematic observatories of Palazzo Chigi. The text arrived in the Senate on 23 October but has not yet been assigned.
