ESC in a residential center for unaccompanied foreign minors - TUIN

The Cooperative La Comunità is active in Genoa since 1979 in the field of education and youth distress, aimed at supporting minors and fragile families through the design and management of socio-educational, animation, and cultural services. It works in cooperation with other cooperatives, organizations, and public institutions. We want to spread a culture of solidarity and tolerance, creating opportunities for every individual, reducing the risk of social exclusion. Concerning services for minors, La Comunità has four different kinds of services: -Daily educational centers (Comunità Educativa a ciclo diurno – CED); - Socio-educational centers (Centro Socio Educativi – CSDE); - Territorial Educational Communities (Comunità Educativa Territoriali- CET) - Educational residential centers (Comunità Educativa d’Accoglienza Residenziale -CEA). CED is a semi-residential service offering daily hospitality for minors living in complex contexts, but who, despite having difficulties, maintain a significant relationship with their families and parents. CED usually welcomes children living nearby who are having personal, relational, behavioral problems; who are in need of individual educational interventions; who are placed in complex family and social situations, but not requiring removal from the family. Within the CED System, they can find a safe space to learn, have fun and be social, while at the same time following a schedule and regularity which are not always present in their own families. At the moment we manage CED Tepee in Municipio Levante and CED La casa nel Bosco in Municipio Meda Valbisagno. CSDE works in a high-risk area, trying to avoid the breaking of family ties and to reconstruct, sustain and develop all relationships involving the minors, so as to invert the tendency towards marginalization. Through daily educational activities, they provide special and flexible tools able to accompany the minor and his/her family also through a temporary crisis. La Comunità currently runs CSED San Giovanni Battista in Municipio Bassa Valbisagno; Fata Carabina in Municipio Centro Est and Il Levante in Municipio Levante. CETs are day centers that welcome children from families that are compromised on a social and educational level, but with parental and personal resources that can be reactivated under the guidance of the operators. Although it is a daytime service, it is possible to host children and adolescents in a residential manner overnight if, for safety and/or legal reasons, they cannot return to their families. The final goal though, it’s to reintroduce the minor to his/her own family for the longest time possible. La comunità is managing CET Ardini. Concerning residential services for minors, La Comunità is managing one CEA (Comunità Educativa d’Accoglienza Residenziale- Educational Residential Centres), called San Nicolò, in Municipio Centro Est in Genova, which is hosting 9 minors aged 6-18 years old under Genoa Municipality accreditation and authorization. CEAs host minors who are living in a risky or prejudicial situation with personal distress situations and also with severe behavioural problems, mostly caused by sever trauma. Minors are in this case, taken in by social services as a temporary separation from their natural family has been assessed as needed to guarantee the supreme interest of the child. In the CEA they can live, grow, study, have fun and create significant relationships with peers and educators. Activities are structured in a way to guarantee both group and autonomous spaces to the users. Finally, La Comunità has opened up a residential centre for unaccompanied foreign minors (MSNA) called “Tuin - Il giardino” in Genova, where 16 minors are living and developing their personal project towards the reaching of the coming of age with the support of educators in cooperation with Genoa Municipality. During the years, EVS and ESC volunteers have been involved in CED, CSED, CEA and MSNA activities, while from this year we would like to host them also within our CET center in Via Ardini. ESC volunteers will be able to carry out their activities in each of these services, discovering the peculiarity of every aspect of our work and, after a first orientation period, choose which one to focus on the most. Concerning other community services, La Comunità has also a contract for the management of three Service Family Centers (CSF), integrated daily services offering parenthood support services and socialization and integration opportunities for minors and families. Since 2014, La Comunità has been part of the network of services answering to the so-called “Emergenza Sbarchi” under the coordination of the Prefect, thus managing hosting placements for migrants asylum seekers. In these centers, professionals are supporting people in understanding Italian reality, in their legal process for asylum requests, and in schooling and training paths aimed at social and working integration.