Conference Program

Democratic education in early childhood requires a paradigm shift: from fragmented, sector-based interventions to local ecosystems capable of integrating rights, care, participation, and social justice. Within this perspective, the project Social Services and the Educational Community for Early Childhood was developed through collaboration among Save the Children, the National Foundation of Social Workers, and the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, with pilot implementation in the Municipality of Bari.

The project frames childhood not as a preparatory phase, but as a political and generative space where belonging, agency, effective access to rights are shaped. Its theoretical framework is grounded in three key dimensions: the centrality of the first 1.000 days for neurobiological, emotional and relational development; the evolution of the 0–6 system toward a universal and inclusive model; evidence that early access to high-quality educational services can reduce social and cultural disadvantage. In line with Legislative Decree 65/2017 and European guidelines on inclusive Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), the research investigates a still underdeveloped issue: the role of social work in local governance and interprofessional co-design across educational, social, and health sectors.

Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative participatory action-research approach. The design involves about 25 professionals from social services, third-sector organizations active in 0–6 provision, nurseries, and preschools. The training and reflective pathway – structured through online modules and in-person workshops – includes pre- and post-questionnaires, two rounds of focus groups (at the end and six months later), and in-depth interviews with social workers. The goal is to identify professional learning processes, transformations in practice, organizational challenges. Training is considered not only a pedagogical device but also an observational context for examining the emergence of shared professional language, interinstitutional trust, and the capacity to activate rights-oriented local networks for children and families.

A core axis concerns child protection and parenting support as structural levers for reducing inequality. Protection is conceived in preventive terms, emphasizing early identification of vulnerabilities (economic, relational, housing, and educational), integrated case management, and continuity during critical family transitions. Parenting support is understood as empowerment: listening, guidance, cultural and linguistic mediation, promotion of educational competencies, and facilitation of access to rights and local opportunities. From this perspective, 0–6 integration performs a concrete redistributive function by lowering material, informational, and symbolic barriers; reducing service fragmentation; strengthening trust between families and institutions; and making universalism effectively accessible, especially for the most vulnerable households.

Territorial laboratory activities – including co-construction of a Manifesto of the Educating Community, mapping of 0–6 services and spaces, and analysis of relationship quality among local actors – show how participatory practices can make informal resources, service gaps, and underserved groups visible, enabling contextualized and inclusive micro-planning.

Expected outcomes operate on three interconnected levels: professional (defining the profile of the 0–6 social worker), organizational (strengthening multi-actor governance), and pedagogical-political (consolidating educating communities as democratic infrastructures of proximity). The project ultimately proposes rethinking the relationship between education and democracy from early childhood onward by embedding protection, participation, shared responsibility, and equity as ordinary practices of social citizenship.