Full inclusion of minors in out of home care is achieved first and foremost thanks to a school and social community capable of creating favorable conditions for reception and acceptance. Prejudices and lack of knowledge about these minors, their families of origin, residential facilities and foster care families, not only limit the availability of the foster care families, but also act as an impediment towards the help strategies that could be activated by teachers and, more in general, by the adults who are part of the support network (parents of classmates, coaches, catechists...). The false myths created about foster care proposed by the media are numerous and persistent (e.g. foster families are driven by economic interests; children in care are frequently mistreated; children and especially adolescents who live outside their family are all problematic; foster care is too long; the family of origin is guilty and irrecoverable or, on the contrary, the children are unfairly "taken away" from the family of origin...) (Howard, 2010; Delgado et al. 2022). The literature on the topic has highlighted how the stigma relating to not living with their biological parents negatively affects these minors, so much so that it leads some to keep their condition secret, especially at school (Dansey et al. 2019; Farmer et al., 2013; Abena Owusu, 2023). The difficulties of socialization and integration "on par" with classmates, together with frequent scholastic difficulties, affect the self-esteem of minors in care (Heding et al. 2011). The frequent transitions that characterize the lives of these minors also require the effort of starting over every time to build and re-build already difficult relationships. However, peers can also be an important support. According to research, much depends on the skills of adults and the representations they have to foster an inclusive climate and adequate support (Rogers et al., 2017). In order to formulate targeted training proposals for a better inclusion of minors in foster care, it was deemed appropriate to highlight the representations of future generations of teachers, educators and social workers. The research conducted, which will be illustrated in the contribution, highlights the persistence of some critical issues and important gaps in information on the phenomenon. The media influences on the topic will also be analysed. At the end of the contribution, innovative training proposals will be addressed.

The adopted children are particularly vulnerable to academic and relational problems due to neglect or past traumatic experiences (Palacios, Román, and Camacho 2010), and the school environment is a fundamental setting where these problems can be addressed or prevented. Recent studies (Novara et al., 2017; Novara et al., 2020) are giving more and more relevance to the role of the school environment in influencing students’ behavior, since children and adolescents spend much of their time at school. A promising strategy consists in promoting those characteristics of the school climate that can foster the teachers’ competence to satisfy the educational and emotional needs of adopted children.

In view of these considerations, promoting the creation of a school climate improving teachers’ understanding of the adoption process and the emotional complexities families face would seem to be a particularly important measure to facilitate the children’s adjustment as reported from the research that will be presented. Participants were 573 teachers (95.7% women; mean age = 47.06, SD = 8.66, ranging between 25 and 65) residing in three Italian regions characterized by rates of international adoptions that are higher than the national average. The association between school climate and teachers’ knowledge and competences on adoption was evaluated via independent multiple logistic regression analyses. Findings show that three of the components of school climate under examination are associated to teachers’ knowledge and competences regarding the adoption experience. Thus, interventions aimed at improving school climate hold promise for promoting teachers’ capacity to handle the challenges of the adoption process (Baker, 2013). The results recommend training programmers for teachers and the recognizing the co-responsibility of the family, school and educational services (Balenzano, 2023).

Finally, the CURA Project (PRIN2022 - Children as vulnerable Users of the IoT and AI-based technologies: a multi-level and inteRdisciplinary Assessment - 2022KAEWYF) will be presented to explore a first analysis of the risks and potential of the digital environment in the open education.

The Italian child care systems and the related social work methodologies can be usefully analysed through a multidimensional approach, involving different sectors of the social sciences (Greco & Iafrate, 2001; Greco & Maniglio, 2009). As the social representation of foster care is recently drawn as a set of cognitive and evaluative issues (Scivoletto, 2013), it remains deeply related to the ‘lesson’ of de-instituzionalization approach (Basaglia, 1967; Goffman, 2001). So, one of the main challenges in the current welfare systems programs is to build an integrated development between economic and social systems to set measures able to combat poverty and social exclusion towards social equity and empowerment of the foster children (Kincheloe, 2011; Freire, 1971; Sandel, 2010). The proposal moves from some results of a research conducted in Emilia-Romagna, a region in Northern Italy, starting from the hypothesis that the residential foster care homes (RFCH) have the capacity to generate interactions and social relationships between those who, at different levels, are involved in it functioning (parents, professionals, educational services, social services, health services, associations, volunteers). The research was carried out by the Social Research Center of University of Parma (CIRS). This presentation will show only the main results from the quantitative data; specifically, the results from an online questionnaire filled out by a sample of managers of RFCH in the Emilia-Romagna territory. The self-representations that the respondent sample highlighted allow us to identify their ability to generate and nourish fair relationships, thanks to trust-type bonds (both interpersonal and systemic), towards the empowerment of the children and their social participation (UN 1989). The contribution aims to offer some reflections, more in general, on the issue of the children foster – care (Act. N. 184/1983) and the role of residential foster care homes (RFCH) as a resource, both for the growth and education of children, both as generators of social equity and empowerment dynamics of the families and the local communities (Pinkerton & Dolant, 2007).

Bullying victimization by peers has been recognized as a relevant social issue during adolescence as it may be associated with emotional difficulties, greater psychological distress and lower academic performances. Despite research on adopted adolescents showed higher levels of internalizing problems, lower peer acceptance, fewer prosocial behavior and close relationships than non-adoptees, few studies focused on the prevalence of bullying victimization within this specific group (Caceres et al., 2024; Ferrari et al., 2022; Pitula et al., 2024, 2029; Raaska et al., 2012). Moreover, although relevant research on general population regarding risk factors for bullying have been carried out, little is known about the association between the bullying victimization and the victim’s ethnic group membership. As a matter of fact, facing with the ethnic difference that gives visibility to the child's adoption, represents one of the crucial challenge for transracial adolescent adoptees (Ferrari et al., 2015; 2019; 2017a, b, c; Lee et al., 2015; Mohanty, 2013). In order to fill these gaps, we carried out some studies (Caceres et al., 2024; Ferrari et al., 2022a) in order to examine the bullying victimization among transracial adolescent adoptees. In this contribution we focused on the associations between victimization and adoptees’ well-being, taking into account individual and social risk and protective factors, and exploring the role of adoptive identity (Grotevant et al., 2000) and ethnic differences in terms of reflected minority categorization (Ferrari et al., 2022b). Participants were 140 internationally adopted adolescents, aged between 13 and 17 years, recruited trough the collaboration of agencies and professionals working in the field of international adoption, and were informed by letter about the main objectives of the research. The instrument used was an online self-report questionnaire, including measures regarding the constructs of interest. Findings showed that being victimized turned out to be associated with higher levels of emotional and behavioral difficulties, but that the strength of this relation varied according to the levels of adoptive identity and reflected minority categorization. Specifically, victimization was found to have a more detrimental and negative impact on psychological adjustment for adoptees who were highly identified with the adoptive group, and reported to be less perceived by others as members of the minority group. Results will be discussed in relation to recommendations for further research as well as for professionals working with internationally adopted adolescents.

Forty years after the approval of law n. 184 on May 4th, 1983, "Right of the minor to have a family" as afterwards modified by law n. 149/2001, the last sentence of the Constitutional Court, n° 183 on September 28th, 2023, in line with the preceding ones of the European Court of Human Rights, has approved the common interpretation according to which in some specific cases, the courts of minors can, (when already issued a fully legitimizing adoption sentence), provide that the minor maintains de facto (non-legal) relationships with the family of origin (even if the family of origin have lost parental responsibility) while acquiring the full status filiationis of the adoptive family. This is the so-called open adoption, which, based on the institution of jurisprudential creation of "mild adoption", intends to add a family to the minor without replacing the original one, especially when important emotional relationships exist, which if broken, could have negative effect and be contrary to the interest of the minor. It is obvious at first sight the extent of the cultural and social changes contained in these legal decisions which recognizes the importance of the emotional and family background of a person, by emphasizing the weight of the environment to which the minor belong to.

The law has considered the improvement and achievements arising from interdisciplinary scientific fields such as psychology, sociology, pedagogy, ethology, neuroscience, psychoanalysis which have highlighted that in some specific situations preserving relationships with the family of origin can represent an appropriate reply to a type of critical issues that full adoption sometimes faces, as this last one prohibits the same relationships (ex. the cases of the so-called “blameless abandonment” due to non-voluntary deficiencies or weaknesses).

However, a more exhaustive educational reflection highlights how in the open form of adoption plays an important role the complex’s intersubjective dynamic, which could awaken in all the subjects involved (minor, family of origin, adoptive family) some silent traumatic memories (sense of guilt, narcissistic injuries, distress not fully processed, etc.) and create ambivalent or conflictual situations that have negative consequences rather than positive effects on the minor's development.

Even if on one side is obvious that the success of the adoptive process - whatever its form - depends on the degree of stability and reliability of the mutual emotional acknowledgement of the child - adoptive parent, achieved at the end of a progressive and delicate building process of bonding, on the other side it is therefore urgent to reflect educationally on the good practices to be implemented in the socio-educational systems involved in the process (pre and post-adoption services, schools, etc.) to promote relationships between biological and adoptive parents capable to consciously and responsibly accept the different roles and functions each of them play within the open family environment. This is in order to avoid exposing the minor to what Winnicot defined as impingement, i.e. negative pressure that led to a break in the sense of continuity of the self and instead guarantee a unique existential storytelling.