Foster Care in Italy

Kymenlaakso University of Applied Sciences has had the pleasure of co-operating with several European universities for decades now. The co-operation has mainly included student and teacher exchange, but also e.g. international weeks and common research and development projects. The idea of this book first emerged after one of our teacher’s, senior lecturer Tuija Suikkanen-Malin’s experiences during her teacher exchange period in Poland. She pointed out to our teacher group, that our colleagues all over Europe struggle with the same problems of foster care than we do in Finland, and that they have found some interesting answers as well. This brought us to the idea of collecting these struggles and experiences into a book.

Foster care is a multilayered and complex area of social work with children and families. This book contributes to the contemporary discussion of foster care in three parts. First, it introduces how there are several ways of organizing foster care, focusing on four different European countries: Italy, Slovakia, Spain and Turkey. Then we continue with a closer look at the most important persons involved: the children and the childhood they live in foster care. Big questions are posed in this part of the book: What does it actually mean to be maltreated as a child? How can children and young people be helped? What do children themselves think about foster care? The third part of the book then focuses on parenting and parenthood, bringing up important issues of values, attitudes, shared parenting and encountering.

On behalf of the editors of this book, I wish the reader many meaningful and thought-provoking moments with the articles. I also wish to give our warmest thanks to all the devoted authors of the articles, as well as to the excellent peer reviewers. All the articles of this book have been blind-reviewed. The writers carry sole responsibility of the language, contents and concepts of the articles. The editors have changed some technical details and compressed some parts of the articles. Special thanks also to our colleagues in Kymenlaakso University of Applied Sciences, Harri Mäkinen, Pekka Malvela and Jaana Poikolainen, for your kind help during the publishing process. Foster care is worth these efforts.