Looking for new spaces of education for children without parental care: the Italian process of deinstitutionalization after the second World War / B поисках новых образовательных пространств для детей, оставшихся без попечения родителей: итальянский процесс деинституционализации после Второй мировой войны

In the second half of the twentieth century, Italy’s care system for minors requiring out-of-home placements underwent radical transformation. Children and adolescents lacking adequate parental support, who had traditionally been hosted in large institutions, now began to benefit from renewed educational interest. Large-scale care institutions increasingly came under criticism on account of the characterless style of their spaces, the strict discipline they enforced, their self-referentiality, their impersonal approach to intervention, and the fact that they did not offer emotionally significant adult care. Following the founding of the Italian Republic and its Constitution, the intellectuals and politicians of the day, recognizing the need to protect the well-being of minors, called for a revisiting of residential facilities for children and youth requiring out-of-home care, which in practice was already happening in the context of some far-sighted, albeit isolated, projects. The late-1960s and 1970s saw the spread, throughout the country, of “comunità familiari” [family-type small group homes], characterized in the first instance by a strong emphasis on the relational needs of the child. These homes replaced the larger residential institutions, which were gradually shut down, although legislation on the topic emphasized the irreplaceable role played by the family of origin, which was to receive support when struggling to fulfil its educational functions. In Italy, the de-institutionalization process was long drawn out, and only finally reached completion in the early 2000s. The essay offers an outline of the defining moments in this process, the pedagogical rationale for it, and the policies undergirding it.