Allargare lo spazio familiare: adozione e affido

[Autom. eng. transl.] Adoption and foster care are not new forms of family. They have always represented a spontaneous social response to the need for "care" of children without an adequate family context and at the same time an expression of the "generative" and prosocial desire of families. These are two legal institutions that deserve to be relaunched, emphasizing their potential and rediscovering their most authentic nature. In fact they are forms that allow us to highlight some constituent elements of the family, essential today, perhaps more than in the past, to reflect on the meaning of being parents and being children. Adoption and foster placement are placed at the intersection point between family and social life and reveal its profound interconnection: therefore the social, too, is called to assume a specific responsibility in supporting families through the various stages of adoption and foster care . The joint treatment of issues relating to adoption and those relating to foster care, in the implications of similarity and distinction, and the interdisciplinary and international scope that all the contributions go through qualify in a peculiar way this volume, which is addressed to students, to professionals and operators in the sector involved in accompanying adoptive and foster families.