Il punto di vista dei bambini nei processi di affidamento familiare. Ricerca esplorativa con gli operatori dei servizi del Comune di Genova.

This PhD thesis aims to explore the context of foster care services in relation to the participation of children in foster care projects designed for them. Giving the opportunity to children to express their point of view on events that affect them, before being a right recognized by the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC article 12, 1989), is the basis of the contemporary pedagogical vision that considers the child as the "protagonist" (Cian, 1993) capable of acting on the world around him and the active "builder" (Vygotsky, 1978) of his knowledge in the context he belongs to. This right seems hardly granted within the Protection Service that deal with children and families in difficult situations, as in such cases the institutional warrant focused on the function on protection, presupposing the capability of an adult to know what is better for a child and decide accordingly in his best interest, is to prevail. This project is developed within the ecological perspective of human development (Bronfenbrenner 1979, 2005) and intends to investigate the theme of "the child's point of view" with reference to the hetero-family foster care experience he is living, in order to highlight the possible areas of reflection and innovation in the design of foster care services by the operators involved. The survey group consists of 16 social workers, 8 children between 5 and 10 years old and their families who are cared for by the services of the Genoa Municipality, as this municipality has been appointed by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs for testing the National Guidelines for the Family Foster Care which were approved on 25.10.2012. By assuming a purely qualitative approach, through the implementation of the "Research Training Intervention" model, the survey will be conducted using the tools of the Mosaic Approach (Clark, 2001.2005) which have been adapted to the type of the survey group. Therefore visual techniques such as the use of photography will be utilized; the construction of the photo album to collect the child's point of view, which will be integrated later with the one of the adults (birth family, foster family, social services protection operators) through semi-structured interviews and focus groups. The literature review focused on the close examination of the cultural, legislative, psychological and pedagogical roots of the aspects related to the child's listening and participation to the decisions that concern him (Dame Butler-Sloss, 2001) within the services for minors, and in particular in local child protection services. The evaluation of the experience of "training" first and then "action research" together with the operators involved outlined the pedagogical aspects that are central to the European and international debate on the actual realization of the right of listening and participation, in particular for children included in protection and foster care programs; moreover, it has proposed interesting developments on the organizational dimension of the services in which the operators work or interface, as a crucial element in achieving systematic and not occasional practices that put at center the child's point of view in the decisions that concern him