Welcoming communities for unaccompanied foreign minors
The goal of the project, creating a relationship of trust as quickly as possible, is to help the minor achieve personal autonomy by studying, acquiring professional skills and reintegrating in society assisted by Social Services. The activity is carried out in collaboration with the local Social Services, who bring us the minors, take on the role of their guardians, and shoulder the economic burden.
Country and local beneficiary
Mainly Albania, Kosovo, North Africa, Bangladesh, Pakistan, or any country of origin of adolescents between 14 and 18 years old, who have arrived in Italy without a family and without a regular residence permit.
The educational programmes carried out in reception communities are especially aimed at promoting the rapid understanding, elaboration and evaluation of the minors' situation by means of intensive psycho-educational action that helps them overcome the psychological hardship arising from the emergency, face the outside world and identify the most appropriate paths of social integration, understand and acknowledge the rules of the society they will become part of through, if necessary, a language literacy course and guidance on the rights and duties.
Activities considered fundamental for the realisation of the service are:
- Individual unstructured interviews
- Weekly psycho-educational groups
- Regular health monitoring
- Daily work activities
- Italian language courses
- Professional training courses
- Collaboration with cultural mediators
- Collaboration with the SIIL Ravenna (integrated job placement service)
- Cultural activities and study (study of the Italian language)
- Sports and recreation activities
- Work placement
The prerequisite on which the intervention is based, is that the residential centre itself, both as a whole and its various components, be the specific treatment facility for each individual minor.
Results achieved:
The facility accommodated 47 minors in 2013, 57 in 2014 and 58 in 2015.
Over the three years, the percentage of a positive outcome, in other words, finishing the programme at the age of 18, corresponds to approximately 90% of treated cases, 65% of which led to real integration with stable employment contracts.
The remaining 10% did not complete the programme as they were put in foster care, and roughly only 1% was either deported or ran away.
