Foster care from the point of view of natural families

Foster care from the point of view of natural families: a qualitative study on the experience of
natural parents with foster children
[2015]-[2016]
Research group: Ondina Greco, Ivana Comelli, Raffaella Iafrate
Abstract
Today, the practice of foster care in Italy is deficient with respect to the actual needs. At the basis of
the difficulties in promoting foster care as a concrete response to the support needs of a minor are
two main causes: the limited number of families willing to take in a foster child and the difficulties
of the persons involved to devote a cultural, economic and organisational investment that will
implement the foster system itself.
In light of the above, the project launched by the Cariplo call for tender “Promuovere e sostenere
reti per l’affido familiare” (Promote and support foster home networks) has been developed,
implemented by the association ASCI (lead partner) and the Centro di Ateneo Studi e Ricerca sulla
Famiglia (University Centre for Family Studies and Research) of the Catholic University of Milan.
The project, which is based in Como, assumes the form of a research-action that has enabled us to
enter the world of foster care in order to investigate the current situations of foster caring and
synergetically promote a hospitality culture.
On this subject, the Como district services, which work with the natural families of foster children,
are selecting a group of natural families so as to develop with them small groups for training
sessions with the objective of collecting the perceptions, feelings and experience of these parents.
These meetings, which will be conducted directed by the operators of the family counselling
services that are contacting the families, will be recorded and the minutes of these meetings (more
specifically, a sample of these taken from various phases of the programme with the families, which
for now has been established as monthly - starting from January 2015 and ending with the
termination of the tender funding in 2016) analysed using paper and pencil instruments and
information technology tools.