The CHILD.for.CHILD project funded by the Rights, Equality and Citizenship of the European Union programme (2014-2020) officially started on April 1st. The 3P Cooperative is the coordinator of this project in partnership with: University of Palermo (Italy), Union of Municipal and Provincial Assessors for Social Health and Labour Policies (Italy), Sorangeli Trans srl (Romania), Associatia centru de Performanta before and after School Conil (Romania), Associatia Hraniti Copii Feed the Children (Romania).

The project is aimed at children in care in residential structures and careleavers (new adults, who have lived part of their childhood or adolescence in a hetero-family context, in foster care or in a community) in order to ensure their transition to adult life outside such centres, strengthening their skills, the systems involved and the professional figures who deal with them and implementing more appropriate policies. Children who leave communities must be able to redefine their landmarks and activate skills and resources that enable them to make informed choices and live their lives to the full. This would result in improved school performance and easier access to higher education and/or employment success. As far as the professionals involved are concerned, the aim is to have a greater knowledge of how to provide them with support to achieve these objectives. In addition, there is no complete and up-to-date register of minors and juveniles living in residential structures or outside their families of origin.

In this scenario, the project aims to address these shortcomings and specifically consists of 5 "work packages" to achieve the objectives, including a regional mapping of child care and assistance centers, several publications on the subject, a training toolkit also in webinar format, the creation of an Observatory on the social conditions of minors in care centers and careleavers.

Apart from the tools for disseminating the results, including an initial conference in Bucharest and a final in Palermo, a series of activities aimed at the sustainability of the project will be carried out so that the CHILD.for.CHILD model can live even after the end of the project itself, especially thanks to the creation of the Observatory that during the project, will serve to monitor its impact, and after the end of the project will continue to work to ensure an up-to-date view of the phenomenon. In addition, CHILD.for.CHILD provides that children are directly and actively involved in its implementation, and that there is a continuous comparison with the political priorities in the area of intervention, to ensure that the activities of the project can be included in the local social policy programmes in the two partnership countries (Italy and Romania).