Training, Plan and Funding: Government attempts recovery

First the White Paper presented on Friday and drafted by the technical-scientific committee of the National Observatory on Violence Against Women: the basis for the first unambiguous guidelines on the training of all actors, from the police to health workers, from magistrates to lawyers, from teachers to journalists. Then, by the end of the year, the update of the National Anti-Violence Strategic Plan (the last one adopted is related to 2021-2023), on which the tables convened since the end of October at the Equal Opportunities Department of the Council Presidency, led by Laura Menicucci, are working. Tables that follow the 'four Ps' of the Istanbul Convention, around which the previous Plan was built: prevention, protection, punishment, promotion and assistance. The perspective will therefore be one of continuity, with a stronger emphasis on setting priorities and the concrete tools to be used to pursue the objectives. These are the moves with which the government, urged on by a chronicle that never ceases to return tragedies, is trying to give new impetus to the action against violence against women, which is stuck in the Roccella law of a year ago.

The new decree for the distribution among the Regions of the Fund for policies on rights and equal opportunities intended to finance assistance to women victims of violence and their children was also prepared. The same level of resources guaranteed in 2023 - 55 million (40 million in 2022) - will be added to the 25 million allocated annually until 2026 by the budget law for 2024 for new anti-violence centres (5 million) and shelters (20 million). The decree is expected to go shortly to the State-Regions Conference. As for the minimum requirements of the facilities, the intention filtering through the Executive is not to backtrack on the cardinal principles of the State-Regions agreement: in order to introduce "surgical" solutions, a verification on the criticalities in the single territories is underway with the Regions.

The initiatives of the Minister of Natality, Family and Equal Opportunities, Eugenia Roccella, who is convinced that the White Paper represents 'a milestone' for the definition and recognition of violence (she now has the arduous task of translating it into training guidelines), are joined by those of other ministries. The owner of the Viminale, Matteo Piantedosi, has finally acknowledged the existence of "undoubted criticalities" in the system of electronic bracelets (10,458 active ones as of 15 November 2023, see the article on page) and on Tuesday a meeting was held at Palazzo Chigi chaired by undersecretary Alfredo Mantovano to identify the remedies for the too many malfunctions. As for the 'Educare alle relazioni' project presented a year ago by Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara, it is pitch black: there is no official monitoring of the initiative, which was supposed to consist of discussion groups between students and professors for a total of 30 hours of extracurricular activities, financed with 15 million euros of Pon funds.

But what is the balance of government action according to the network of anti-violence centres? The guidelines contained in the white paper are considered an important step, urged by the associations themselves and central to the issue of training. It is no coincidence that the vademecum is 'technical', the result of the work of the members of the Cts, all experts in violence: the philosopher of language Fabrizia Giuliani, who coordinates it, the judge Paola Di Nicola, the gynaecologist Alessandra Kustermann, Dr Vittoria Doretti, the sociologist and activist Lella Palladino, the manager Claudia Segre. However, these are guidelines that will have to be evaluated on their merits, given that the text was not shared with the centres before being presented to the public and the press. More generally, however, the government's action is judgedineffective from many quarters: there are many 'knee-jerk' reactions from the executive to the most striking events in the news, and little forward-looking vision. "Antonella Veltri, president of D.i.Re - Donne in rete contro la violenza (D.i.Re - Women in the Network Against Violence), complains that there is no overall vision, no systemic planning, and it is the women who suffer violence who pay the price.

This is also shown, for the associations, by the management of the anti-violence plan, which expires in 2023, and the knots of the distribution of funds and minimum requirements for the centres, all still to be unravelled. "At the moment, for example, we have a very low coverage of beds in the shelter homes and this undermines the whole protection system," says Elisa Ercoli, president of Differenza Donna, which in addition to managing anti-violence centres and shelter homes in Campania and Lazio, is in charge of the department's anti-violence number 1522.