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Abstract
This article presents a case study that we consider significant for the social work of ‘welcoming communities’ in Italy. In the first part, we describe the history, methodologies and educational instruments aimed at young adults with social and work integration difficulties. In the second part, we present research questions, methods and results of a field research study carried out over 8 years, during which researchers were continuously present. All the 375 persons living in the welcoming community Villa S. Ignazio, in Northern Italy, have been observed. In the conclusions, we point out the main elements for a critical reflection that may lead to a methodological enhancement of the activities, also considering the global economic and political crisis, which is particularly dangerous for the rights of the vulnerable people.
Questo articolo presenta uno studio di caso che consideriamo emblematico per il lavoro sociale delle Comunità di Accoglienza residenziali in Italia. Nella prima parte si descrivono la storia, le metodologie e gli strumenti educativi rivolti a giovani adulti in difficoltà di inserimento sociale e lavorativo. Nella seconda parte presentiamo domande di ricerca, metodi e risultati di una indagine sul campo svolta in 8 anni di presenza continuativa dei ricercatori. Sono state osservate tutte le 375 persone ospitate nella Comunità di Accoglienza Villa S. Ignazio di Trento nel nord Italia. Nelle conclusioni si evidenziano i principali elementi di riflessione critica al fine di un rafforzamento metodologico delle attività, anche in considerazione del momento di crisi economica e politica globale particolarmente pericolosa per i diritti delle persone più deboli.
Acknowledgments
We want to thank all the people who have collaborated in this research project: guests and former guests, social health educators, volunteers, people taking part in the civilian service, participants and social workers of the project ‘Puntonet’ and the General Coordination and Management Board of Villa S. Ignazio. A particular thanks goes to Silvia Morandini and Elisa Michelon for their important role in managing all the documents and information.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. It was part of the learning process within the ESF Projects of the Autonomous Province of Trento, called ‘Puntonet’, in favour of unemployed people with a certified disability and carried out by Villa S. Ignazio.
Notes on contributor
Dario Fortin is an assistant professor in Methodology of Social Health Education at the University of Trento (Italy) and leader of the Research Office Villa S. Ignazio of Trento.
Notes
1. The term ‘Welcoming Communities’ should be considered as a temporary solution, which needs to be confirmed. As a matter of fact, the author and his collaborators (both from universities and from public and private services) had significant linguistic and semantic difficulties in identifying a term that could faithfully translate the Italian term ‘Comunità di Accoglienza’. In this case, the author referred to Levinas’ (Citation1969) concept of ‘welcoming the Other’. Both ‘comunità’ (community) and ‘accoglienza’ (welcome) are two words with a very strong semantic meaning, as they both refer to primitive Christian communities, thus having an intrinsic ethical, spiritual and relational value, which goes beyond both the classification of social care and health services and the residential or day centres. While analyzing the literature on the web, the author found some terms which may be close to our meaning, such as therapeutic communities, community shelters, residential homes, residential care centres, children homes, foster care centres, reception centres, etc. During his research, Carl R. Rogers (Citation1961), found an effective phrase that is particularly close to our concept of ‘accoglienza’ (welcoming), that is to say an attitude of ‘unconditional positive consideration’. More recently, in a study on core counseling psychology, Mick Cooper has helped us in this task by defining Levinas’ (Citation1969) concept of ‘welcoming the Other’ as ‘a deep, radical welcoming’ (Cooper, Citation2009). In the present paper, it is possible to understand the context and characteristics of these interventions, but we believe that the problem of a correct international definition of this specific typology of interventions and structures, which have had a significant role for the non-profit Italian organizations, is still open. It will be necessary, indeed, to further analyze this specific problem in a future study.
2. The length of stay in the welcoming community varied from person to person (from 3 days to 3 years, on average) and every day there were approximately 25 people living at the same time in the centre. If we add volunteers, young people doing their civil service and religious people (15 in total), there was an average of 40 people per day staying in the welcoming community.
3. Over the last 25 years, the author has collaborated with almost hundred welcoming communities scattered throughout Italy and involved in almost all sectors of social work.
4. There was a really famous antipsychiatric movement, founded in Gorizia and Trieste, which reorganized psychiatric treatments by offering alternative ways of treatment and the progressive closing down of madhouses. The movement was animated by the existential and phenomenological psychiatrist Franco Basaglia (1924–1980), who gave the name to the law L.180 from 1978.
5. These are the CNCA (Coordinamento Nazionale Comunità di Accoglienza _ National Coordination of Welcoming Communities (www.cnca.it) and the Jesuit Social Network JSN-Italy (www.jsn.it). These two Federations have also established connections and innovative projects in collaboration with non-profit organizations, cultural centres and local administrations in many European countries, most of which are officially approved and funded by the European Social Fund.
6. For further details, see the ‘Ten Principles’ of CNCA at: http://www.cnca.it/essere-cnca/principi and the ‘Preamble to the Statute’ of JSN-Italy at: http://www.jsn.it/Internet/italiano/content.asp?idSettore=13.
7. On the definition of International Social Work, see also: Van Ewijk (Citation2009); Hare (Citation2004); Folgheraiter and Raineri (Citation2012).
8. Trento is the regional capital of a small Autonomous Province in Northern Italy, located in the heart of the Dolomites, between South Tyrol to the North, Veneto to the South East and Lombardy to the West.
9. For details on the life of the founder of the order of the Jesuits, see: De Dalmases (Citation1985).
10. Laboratory of Education to Dialogue (personal and professional training), Diakonia of Faith (spiritual training), Friends of Villa S. Ignazio (promotion of volunteering), Samuele (labour market integration), Astalli Centre (accommodation for refugees), Volontarinstrada –Volunteers on the road– (support for the homeless), L'altrastrada –The other street– (support for prostitutes) and Volunteering Tutors (rights of unaccompanied foreign minors).
11. For a detailed description of these methodological instruments, see Fortin (Citation1998, Citation2004).
12. For a detailed description of these methodological instruments, see Fortin (Citation1998, Citation2004).
13. ‘House meeting’ is a weekly meeting with all the guests of the community.
14. A ‘Convention’ is a type of contract between a public authority and a non-profit organization, where objectives, instruments, intervention methods, funding modalities and financial statements are established.
15. The research staff decided to adopt the same subdivision agreed by the Cooperative Villa S. Ignazio and the Service for Social Politics of the Autonomous Province of Trento, according to the Convention under the law L.P. 35/83 ‘Regulation of interventions aimed at preventing and eliminating cases of marginalization’.
16. The six interviews were carried out with guests who had been discharged from the welcoming community at a specific moment during the retrospective study, that is to say simultaneously with the analysis of the 375 Assessment Forms (June 2010–March 2011). The guests were chosen considering the composition of the welcoming community. This small number of qualitative interviews with respect to the number of IEP considered was due to the practical difficulties of finding the guests who had been discharged during the period 2002–2009. Despite being a critical aspect of the research, it provided a significant support for the phenomenological interpretation, according to the so-called ‘in vivo’ method (Glaser & Strauss, Citation1967/Strati ed. Citation2009, p. 139; Tarozzi, Citation2008, p. 97).
17. During the analysis of the Assessment Forms, three Focus Groups were created with the eight Social Health Educators employed in the welcoming community (including 4 SHE-inside researchers). The analysis method used was ‘feedback groups’ (Bloor et al., Citation2001, p. 106), where the focus was based on a former report, according to which participants are asked to ‘express their opinions in order to widen and better define the focus of analysis’ (Bloor et al., Citation2001). These Focus Groups ‘may be the best method, since they minimize, compared to other techniques, the interviewer bias’ (Bloor et al., Citation2001).
18. Twelve in-depth interviews were carried out with the same amount of key informants: 7 Social Health Educators (employees), 1 volunteer (living in the community), 2 young people doing their civil service (living in the community) and 2 people with administrative functions (employees).
19. The research commissioner is the Social Solidarity Cooperative Villa S. Ignazio of Trento (VSI), which is one of the first non-profit organizations in Northern Italy offering accommodation to young adults with problems of marginalization and many different proposals relating to education, spirituality and solidarity of citizens.
20. VSI has four sectors of activity and two of them (Social Care and Hospitality) make up the welcoming community for young adults with social and health problems.
21. The need for further research in this sector is not an insignificant fact. The Italian research is, indeed, lagging behind in the field of social work and, in particular, of social and health educational care.
22. On the different roles of ‘Assistente Sociale’ (Social Worker) and ‘Educatore Professionale’ (Social Health Educator) in Italy and on the different names for the profession of Educators in Europe, see Fortin (Citation2011b).
23. This part was included in the original research project, but it has not been carried out yet, due to overlapping institutional schedules of the centre.
24. During the semi-structured interviews, guests were asked to undertake a self-assessment of their experience in the welcoming community. The points for reflection concerned: (a) Their objectives in the community; (b) Wellbeing/Unease in the community; (c) A comparison with previous experiences of living together.
For the analysis of the interviews, we have grouped the answers to these questions into three outcome dimensions that emerged as relevant from an educational point of view: awareness, autonomy and socialization.
25. Although the goal of the research was not to create a new theory, to show the guests’ point of view (as requested during the data analysis within the Focus Groups with the SHE) we chose the so-called ‘in vivo’ coding, a procedure typical of the Grounded Theory (Glaser & Strauss, Citation1967/Strati ed. Citation2009, p. 139). According to this procedure, ‘the words used by the participants (guests) are used to define the concepts’ (Tarozzi, Citation2008, p. 97). This strategy is useful in order to preserve the high value that guests place on their visions and actions and at the same time, ‘it prevents the risk of impoverishment of language within a technical-academic lexicon’ (Tarozzi, Citation2008).
26. The outcome dimension of ‘autonomy’ is made up of the key-words used by guests themselves in the interviews.
27. The code of the interviewee is indicated between square brackets.
28. In 14.7% of the cases (55 projects) the value was not recorded due to the impossibility of establishing collaborations, for example with people who stayed just for a few days and with no connection with the territory.
29. This value must be considered, since unlike the degree of agreement with the Services, it is more difficult to reach an agreement with the guests, who very often are not free to choose the answer to their needs, but have to accept what the territory can offer them at that moment.
30. The research project included two Focus Groups with external organizations that will be created in a near future.
31. The author refers to Adler and Adler (Citation1994) to clarify that ‘these roles can range from complete membership of the group being studied (an insider) to complete stranger (an outsider)’.
32. Bonner and Tolhurst (Citation2002) identified three key advantages of being an insider-researcher: (a) having a greater understanding of the culture being studied; (b) not altering the flow of social interaction unnaturally; and (c) having an established intimacy which promotes both the telling and the judging of truth (cited in: Unluer, Citation2012).
33. For a discussion on the validity of insider research, see Rooney (Citation2005); Murray and Lawrence (Citation2000).
34. There are many steps an insider can take to guard against bias in the work, for example careful attention to feedback from participants, initial evaluation of data, triangulation in the methods of gathering data and awareness of the issues represented in the project (Costley, Citation2010, p. 6). Insider research can be also undertaken within any of the three major research paradigms—positivism, hermeneutics, and action research—selected and presented in the article of Brannick and Coghlan (Citation2007).