Childhood, in the new Plan push for 'family centres' to support parents: here's what they are

More generally, the family centres will be the links in a network of interventions and spaces dedicated to accompanying and supporting parenthood, also resorting to the formation of self-help groups, dissemination of good practices, workshops and counselling. Among the services mentioned is also that of 'family mediation for separating parents and/or confrontation groups for separated parents'. A point that promises to provoke debate, given the numerous attempts to make mediation compulsory (see the Pillon bill in the 18th legislature and the Balboni bill, in part, in the current one), contested by those who fear the entry of additional figures in the already crowded separation proceedings that often involve, as witnessed by the reports of the former Senate enquiry commission against feminicide, institutional violence towards mothers. It is true that, to avoid inappropriate interventions, a document will have to define the competences of all the operators of the centres and that a training model with dedicated webinars will be prepared.

Among the risks to turn the spotlight on is 'sharenting', i.e. the 'constant online sharing by parents of content concerning their children (photos, videos, ultrasounds, stories)'. Attention, that to the risks linked to digital life, remains very high even in the pre-adolescent and adolescent phases. In this case, the Plan's targeted actions envisage a census of good practices on the subject of listening and counselling, the drafting of 'operational guidelines' for centre operators, and then the activation of services. Also in the family centres the Plan establishes the activation of services dedicated to the prevention of addiction to psychotropic substances among minors, with information material produced by the Anti-Drug Department of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.

One action is aimed at minors outside the family: 16,382 in 2022, according to the latest official survey available, in some form of family foster care. Net of single foreign minors (more than 23,000 in 2023), there are 15,218 under 18, 62% in 'heterofamilial' foster care. Enhancing the institution of foster care with a preventive function, so as to ensure the timely return of minors to their families of origin, is the aim stated in the Plan. The objective is therefore to foster the "culture of foster care": promote lighter forms of foster care (such as daytime or part-time foster care) and communities of practice, placing foster families at the centre of the system and working on the integration between the public system and the third sector. Also for foster children themselves, the Plan recommends strengthening access to services and simplifying the procedures for granting subsidised social benefits or issuing documents. In any case, the document (in line with the Roccella bill awaiting a vote in the Justice Commission) envisages a study to reconstruct all foster care paths and their outcomes.

Under the heading of education, the Plan proposes measures to strengthen centres, meeting spaces and 'speech groups', but above all the promotion of digital education against the drifts - sexting, morphing, doxing and sharenting - through awareness and information paths in schools and among operators and professionals in the service network, starting with doctors, psychologists and social workers. "Also with the intention - we read - of studying possible limitations on the access of the youngest, at least to some of the services offered by providers". The aim is clear: to prevent the phenomena of digital addiction.

A specific action is to set up a monitoring system for the prevention and recovery of children and young people from social isolation: research will be used to unearth risk factors, a national project to define lines of intervention. Then protocols will be adopted at local level and the use of the 'digital health report' by paediatricians will be promoted. A similar monitoring system is advocated for bullying and cyberbullying with the aim of standardising information systems.

With regard to the issue of male violence against women, the tenth action aims to disseminate the culture of equal opportunities and respect in schools, within the curricula of secondary school cycles. The fifteenth action, on the other hand, plans a data ecosystem on the violence acted, witnessed and suffered by minors in order to sort out the different sources available today and flush out the 'grey areas' of the phenomenon. In the paediatric health budgets are identified the tools to build a monitoring system on ill-treatment: today 42.6% of the reports come from the judicial authorities, less than 10% from doctors and paediatricians.