Acceptance, compliance and scepticism. Adults’ views on children’s participation in the italian social protection system

This study shows that participation practices in the local children’s protection and care systems we examined are still not widely adopted, unless, as the operators themselves suggested, they cannot be included among the factors that contribute to the quality of the care relationship. Seen in this light, participation thus seems to be limited to an intentional effort on the part of operators to collect information from the children in their care, in order to bring the children’s difficulties into sharper focus – information in the broadest sense, about the children’s abilities and intellectual skills, state of mind, wishes or convictions. Participation seems to be reduced simply to implementing an individual program which is adequate for that child’s needs, but nothing more This study was also able to confirm two other characteristic aspects. One was that young people are present and have “voice” only as part of the social worker/child dyad, and not in meetings of the professional teams or case reviews, where the child’s care plan can be discussed and decided upon. The second aspect is that young people’s participation is limited to the personal, rather than systemic, dimension. In other words, it does not extend to the formulation and modification of rules, routines, places and spaces, and, more in general, to the socio-environmental features of the child protection and care system Starting from empirical evidence, operators’ attitudes were divided into four large groups: Acceptance, Acquiescence, Scepticism and Hostility. The probability of success or failure of promoting participatory events in welfare centres is also influenced by the capacity of the projects themselves to create conditions in which the macro-attitude of acceptance gains ground over the other components, mainly acquiescence. At the same time, efforts must be made to ensure that scepticism does not degenerate into hostility, though the latter attitude did not surface explicitly in the study. Scepticism, unlike acquiescence, greatly restricts young people’s chances of expressing their agency, although it does not actively hinder them, as hostility does. From this viewpoint, any action encouraging participation within welfare services must necessarily consider the operators’ opinions, taking their representations, worries and uncertainties, as well as their insights and suggestions, into serious account.