Social Workers Practicing in Child Protection in Italy. How their contribution is perceived by the main subjects involved

It is widely recognized that social workers have quite a relevant and critical role to play in all the interventions directed to promote children’s quality of life, to support families and to protect children from harm. This is particularly relevant in Italy where social workers are often asked to find solutions while there are cuts in family support, face to growing severe social problems. At the same time, there is no national act that coherently regulates the field of child protection and there are no recognized and empirically-based guidelines for practice. Child protection is undoubtedly a very controversial field of intervention, and it is unsurprisingly one of the social work areas where more complaints are filed. The research we are presenting here is part of a wider project promoted by the National Professional Social Work Order and by the National Foundation of Social Work, in order to explore the practices of social work and put in motion a process which leads to the production of shared and evidence knowledgeable guidelines. The wider project included: a systematic review of all guidelines and documents at a local level; a national exploration of good practices; an exploration of the views of the main stake holders, which is the part we are presenting here. Method: considering that we aimed at exploring the value of social work as perceived by the main subjects involved, the approach chosen was qualitative to give the subjects room for expressing ideas and feelings without the constraints. The approach of the research was participatory, and we involved a parent and three care leavers in designing the tools for data gathering; care leavers were also involved in gathering the data. We used semi-structured interviews and focus groups. The subjects involved were children, care leavers, parents, and professionals, and were recruited in different location across Italy. They were asked to describe their contacts with social workers in child protection and they were asked positive and negative examples. The 45 Interviews were analyzed with NVivo11 using a thematic analysis. The research design, as well as the informed consent procedures put in place, have been approved by the ethical committee of the University of Trento. Outcomes: From the interviews it emerges that the different stakeholders have different expectations from practitioners. While there is some homogeneity among the service users group where the expectations are mostly for honesty, commitment, presence, dependability, for the others we have been able to identify contradictory and ambivalent ideas. Anyway, it emerges that the social work professional mission in child protection is not clear to most subjects, nor apparently social workers have been able up to now to be clear and assertive about it. Impact: The outcomes of this research are currently being used to inspire the construction of national guidelines which take into account stakeholders’ views.