The Program of Intervention for Prevention of Institutionalization (P.I.P.P.I.) is a national research-training-intervention program aiming at contrasting child neglect and working with families living in vulnerable situations. P.I.P.P.I. is funded and promoted by the Italian Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in cooperation with the Lab of Research and Intervention in Family Education (LabRIEF) of University of Padua.
The recommendations of the World Bank (Knowles, Behrman, 2005) of the WHO (CSDH, 2008), of the European Union (REC (2013) 112; REC 2006/19/UE), of the 2015-2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (http://www.unric.org/it/agenda-2030) (goals: 1 End poverty in all its forms everywhere, 4 Quality of Education, 10 Reduced inequalities, 16 Peace, justice and strong institutions), the European Child Guarantee, have underlined the importance of strengthening efforts to implement innovative policies for families, through the extension, quality and accessibility of health (from prenatal period to adulthood), educational services (Education child care centres and schools) and of interventions to accompany the parental function (Milani, 2018).
Starting from these recommendations and being a Preservation Family program that leverage on intensive and integrated home care intervention, P.I.P.P.I. aims at innovating the practice of intervention with families with children 0-11 y.o. living in vulnerable situations and facing child neglect. The general goal is to support positive parenting in order to reduce child neglect and the consequent placement out-of-home by:
• articulating in a coherent way the various fields of action around the needs of children living in condition of child-neglect (challenge of integration);
• taking into account the perspective of parents and children in building analysis and response to these needs (challenge of participation);
• evaluating every family in a shared, uniform way to ensure a transparent, accountable, deep, integrated and quality assessment process (challenge of evaluation) (Milani, 2018).
The acronym is linked to the resilience of Astrid Lindgren’s fictional character Pippi Longstocking and her extra-ordinary way to face her challenges and to develop and grow in her environment. The “I” of Institutionalization refers to child placements out-of-home in situations of neglect where other interventions seem more appropriate (Sellenet, 2007), and to practice leading to institutional capture (Lacharité, 2015) such as poor planning, no/poor involvement in assessing the situation, lack of evaluation, vague definition of time and goals etc.