Children and Fostering

The main aim of the Pope John XXIII Community Service for Children and Fostering is to promote and support the culture of welcoming, to guarantee every child the right to live in a family. When it is not possible for children to stay with their own family, welcoming them into another family through fostering is the fairest response in today’s social context.

Children unable to stay with their natural family have many basic needs. They need to feel chosen and to experience the complete, long-term love and affection of those who have chosen them. They have to be able to share in all aspects of family life, and to have their religious need met with great respect and loving care. Only these responses can help people grow in a happy, balanced way. If they are missing, every home they live in becomes a gilded cage. Fostering is the purest act

Aims

• To receive requests to welcome children in from all over the nation.
• To find Pope John XXIII Community families and family homes able to offer a welcome.
• To promote and take part in public meetings, training and consciousness-raising courses and conferences on family fostering and a culture that focuses on welcome. 
• To work in partnership with other public and/or private associations and institutions to launch child-care initiatives.

Acion

• Activating and guiding self and mutual-aid groups for foster families.
• Action aimed at raising awareness of the concept of welcoming also working in partnership with public bodies
• A training school for family fostering
• A two-year course for becoming a family fostering advisor
• Training and re-training courses for social workers.

In 2006, the year in which institutions were scheduled for closure, the service became the moth-piece on this subject, also by attending the conference held on 4 December entitled, "Close the institutions or give a family?" - a powerful, well organised plan of action to guarantee children’s right to a family, putting forward some practical solutions.

The service works with the Forum delle Associazioni Familiari (Italian Families’ Association Forum) and with the CNSA (the Italian National Fostering Coordination Service). 

Figures for the Service for Children and Fostering
(source APG23 2013 Annual Report)

Promoting family fostering and adoption, including for children with severe and very severe disabilities. Supporting families with children in difficulty 595 children welcomed in in Italy