Multifaceted FamILens in Italy: Creating Family Impact Checklist to Help Professionals “Think Family”

Families constitute a fundamental cornerstone for individual and community well-being across the entire life course. \r\nA large amount of research has consistently demonstrated \r\nthat family-centered approaches for family services result \r\nin more positive outcomes for both individuals and family relationships. This underscores the pivotal role families \r\nplay in enhancing educational success, fostering social \r\ncompetences, facilitating work-life balance and mitigating \r\nthe impact of various risk factors. Despite the acknowledged significance of supporting families through policies \r\nand practices, exists a lack of instruments and tools for designing policy/services with a “family thinking” approach. \r\nThis deficiency leaves practitioners inadequately equipped \r\nto design programs addressing diverse range of family dynamics. To addresses this gap, this study explores how the \r\nFamily Impact Lens (Bogenschneider, Little, Ooms, Benning, \r\nCadigan & Corbett, 2012) and its Italian adaptation, the \r\nFamILens (Carrà, 2023), can align policies and services with \r\nthe specific needs of families. The objective of the study \r\nwas to define and validate four Family Impact Checklist \r\nspecifically for use in four key areas of intervention: family \r\nmediation, elderly home care, human resources management, and social services in child protection. Each study \r\nincorporated co-design sessions and a two-round Delphi \r\ninvolving over 15 experts in each domain. The four adapted \r\nChecklists encompass a variable number of items across six \r\n“think family” principles: family responsibility, family stability, family relationship, family diversity, family engagement, \r\nand family networking. After this phase, four large-scale \r\nfamily impact analysis will use surveys through the validated checklists targeting statistically significative samples of \r\nprofessionals. These developed tools can aid professionals in formulating impactful, family-friendly programs that \r\nultimately lead to enhanced individual and community \r\nwell-being.