Today, 18 May, we are celebrating Care Leavers Day, to raise awareness of the plight and needs of care leavers, young people coming out of care in the community or in foster care who, at the age of eighteen, often find themselves alone and bewildered, without a home, a job or adequate social support. Like every year, the Agevolando Association organises a series of events and activities to invite reflection on the daily difficulties of these young people, who are forced to grow up too fast.
The initiative scheduled for today, at 6.18p.m., will include a live broadcast on the association's Facebook page featuring Agevolando's care leavers: boys and girls will make their voices heard to focus the attention of everyone - institutions, operators, services and citizens - on the issues they feel are most urgent, on which they are asking for changes and concrete solutions.
The live broadcast was preceded by 18 questions, posted on Agevolando's Facebook and Instagram profiles from 1 May to today, which highlighted the many obstacles a care leaver is faced with at a young age. The 18 points at the centre of the questions will form the Agevolando Manifesto.
To mark the Day, we would also like to highlight the third National Youth Conference of the Care Leavers project, which will take place from 26 to 28 May, for the first time in person, at the Istituto degli Innocenti in Florence (the first two editions were held online due to health restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic). The national project Care Leavers - Experimentation of interventions in favour of those who, upon reaching the age of majority, live outside their family of origin on the basis of a court order, promoted by the Ministry of Labour and Social Policies and implemented in cooperation with the Istituto degli Innocenti, which is in charge of technical assistance, aims at accompanying young adults who have completed community or foster care paths to autonomy through the creation of the necessary supports to enable them to gradually build a future and become adults from the moment they leave the protection system. The Youth Conferences - bodies of active participation involving care leavers who are beneficiaries of the project – aim at fostering the exchange of experiences and promoting the processes of innovation and sharing with the institutions involved.
The three-day event in Florence will be attended by 34 care leavers and 17 tutors for independence, educational figures who support young people coming out of community or foster care placements in the achievement of their projects for self-sufficiency and represent the 17 regions participating in the national project. The third Youth Conference includes a series of workshops involving care leavers and, in parallel, other workshops dedicated to tutors for independence.
Information and publications on the project are available on this site, at the link https://www.minori.gov.it/en/attivita/care-leavers-project.
Among the most recent publications are the Experimentation Report of care leavers. In January 2022, the second year and the guide Growing towards independence, an easy-to-read version that is primarily aimed at young care leavers - to whom it presents and explains, in a simple and clear manner, the contents and activities planned in the pilot - but is also a useful working tool for caregivers and independence tutors. The aim of the guide is to provide boys and girls with accurate information on the various phases and actions of the project, so that they are able to make an informed choice as to whether to join.
In order to explore the theme of the Day more fully, we would like to present the legal framework on care leavers produced by the National Centre for Documentation and Analysis for Children and Adolescents.
Other materials and news can be found on this site under the topic Young care leavers, which can be reached from the navigation menu "Topics.">