Paper
Casket Project (Progetto Scrigno): the treasure of the origins, the richness of the present, the well-integrated identity development
- issue: Issue 2 / 2009
- authors: Maura Zandonai, Nicoletta Poli, Sabina Grigolli
- keywords: cohesion, Italy
- views: 3475
- downloaded: 1
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abstract
The context: the post-adoption support. When the adopted child arrives in his/her new family, he/she changes from a well-known context to a new reality, where there are unknown dynamics and ways of taking care of him/her. The child we meet in the first post-adoption year is still confused; his/her wound (the break between "before" and "after") is still open, he/she is looking for a safe milieu where he/she can take root in order to feel himself as a member of the new world. However, he/she cannot avoid remembering emotions, images, feelings of his/her former life which still belongs to the child. We think that, during this stage, we can help him/her to reorganize his/her life, to fill the gap between past and present.
According to these considerations, the social workers of the team for adoption of the Trento Municipality decided to try an individualized activity with the adopted child, offering him a "listening space": the Casket project.
Project description. The project is proposed in the first months after the arrival of the child in Italy. There are 8-10 bimonthly meetings. The activity takes place in a special room equipped with games and playing material. The activities are individualized and organized by a social worker who can have the support of a psychologist who helps in the activity with the child.
Through games and drawings, privileged communicative codes, the social worker helps the child to express fantasies, emotions, desires, fears, memories, in a discreet way which respects to the child experiences.
The social worker doesn't interpret or read the intrinsic meaning, but observes and works on the basis of concrete elements shared with the child. He gives the child the certainty that someone understands, grasps and feels his/her effort, pain and loss. Before starting this activity, it is necessary to share with the parents the value of this experience: only the synergy between social worker and parents allows the child to use the space given with serenity. Briefly, the project pursues the following aims:
- to create an "affectively neutral contest" where the child can say-play-draw every significant emotion/event related with the adoption,
- to encourage the expression of any element of memory to permit him/her to keep and order pieces/removal of the past in the new experience to limit as much as possible the splitting between the past and the present which influences adopted child's emotional and cognitive development,
- to help the child develop a sense of continuity between past and present, according to his/her experiences, identity, way of thinking and insecurities about the personality, in the meantime help the child to overcome a sense of loss, mourning and separation,
- to give advice and information and offer any kind of support to the adopting parents working together to find out the best relational strategies.
Findings. Since 2004 up to now we have been meeting 14 children from the age of 3 to 8, coming from different countries. The number of children who have been met during those two years is still quite little to produce an effective and clear report and evaluate the whole project, but we are going to concentrate on that in the short future.
However, it is already possible to evaluate the reaction of those children to this project and they seem to have understood its importance and have appreciate the work done with the social worker and the possibilities offered to them.
Conclusions. This project represents to the first stage in the construction of an attachment relation which involves both foster children - who recognize themselves as having new parents - and foster parents - who become aware of their new situation.
The experience achieved up to now enabled us to show how first meetings between foster children and their new families are so relevant and unique and therefore not classifiable within a given evaluation instrument.
For these reasons, regarding the situations we analysed up to now, the possibility for children to confront with professionals - freely from those emotive involvements which are inevitably present within a family relationship - allowed them to freely express their nostalgia and memories of the care and attachment they had received by their key people in the past. In particular, as an example, we mentioned the case of a little girl who had lived at her grandmother's and now remembered her so strongly to become unable to explain her attachment to her family, due to the loyalty conflict which inevitably had arisen towards her new foster mother.
At the same time we observed how parents often fear and feel shame when approaching their children's past, both to avoid the possibility to confront themselves with unshared memories and because they feel afraid of invading their children's inner space - which is still unfamiliar to them. The possibility to openly and clearly confront with professionals often allowed parents to start speaking and thinking about these contents with the help of some adults who had shared children's memories, thus regaining some meaning and values useful then when communicating with their fostered children. Regarding this, we can mention a game representation made by a child in describing his house while burning and his heroic actions carried out to save his younger brother. If the child could freely express his representations and memories with professionals, foster parents will have to welcome the emotive aspects related to the whole experience, starting from the lots of reflections and meanings shared with the social worker who had met the child.
To conclude, the attention paid by professionals in listening to children, where this was possible, brought children to revise and become more aware of their past experience, in particular that related to the abandonment, thus improving their inner situation. Moreover, close and active collaboration with foster children allowed them to become aware of knowledge and other aspects which then became useful - on the emotive point of view - for the repairing process they must necessarily deal with.
Key references
Winnicott, D. W. (1967). Gioco e realtà. Roma: Armando Editore.
Zini, M. T. & Miodini, S. (1997). Il colloquio di aiuto. Teoria e pratica nel servizio sociale. Roma: NIS.
Contatti: Maura Zandonai, Servizio Attività Sociali - Comune Trento, Via Bronzetti, 1 Trento, E-mail: maura_zandonai@comune.trento.it; nicoletta_poli@comune.trento.it. Phone 0461 827235.