La famiglia nella comunità locale: un’esperienza di solidarietà fra famiglie per prevenire l’allontanamento dei bambini

P.I.P.P.I. (Program of Intervention for Prevention of Institutionalization) is a research-training-intervention program developed as an intensive care program for vulnerable families, funded by Italian Ministry of Welfare. It aims at preventing child placement out-of-home by balancing risk and protective factors, and focuses on supporting parenting through multi-professional and resilient based intervention. P.I.P.P.I. is inspired by the well known resilient girl Pippi Longstocking and aims at working on parental problems related to child neglect, that is intended as a significant deficiency or a failure to meet to child’s needs recognized as fundamental on the basis of current scientific knowledge. In order to support child wellbeing and parenting within a bio-ecological perspective four main interventions are used by Child Protection Services according to the needs and situation of each family and involving different people belonging to the child’s world (Home care intervention, Parents’ group, Participation of School, Family Helpers). This paper focuses particularly on the role of “Family Helpers”: a family, a couple or a single from the network of the family who is involved to give emotional, concrete and parental support to the family as a “resilience tutor” (Milani, Ius, 2010) and that can foster in vulnerable families the possibility to be involved, step by step, in mutual help with others and not being a only receiver.