11 July 2007

Let’s not abandon our young people

I’m publishing a letter from Flavio Mobigli from Monza about assistance given to young people in supported accommodation in the City of Milan and his appeal that you can sign up to: http://www.petitiononline.com/prosammi/petition.html

“The young people under 18 years old who do not have adequate care from their families or who have suffered serious mistreatment, can be allocated a place in a community lodging for children that gives them material support and a positive educational environment.
On arriving at their 18th birthday, if serious problems in the family are ongoing, to allow the young person to finish their studies or to follow a route that will lead to their complete autonomy, there is the possibility to get a voluntary placement in a community for young adults with an administrative procedure called “administrative continuation”, until they are 21 years old.
The city of Milan has decided to no longer finance any administrative continuation project purely to save money, thus obliging hundreds of young people, with serious family problems (or even without families) to be abandoned to their own devices once they turn 18, with the likelihood to have to get by and find a job straight away and a place to live, perhaps having to interrupt their studies and thus preventing them perhaps from the chance of getting a better quality job in the future.
Often, once they have turned 18, the young men or young women who have started a difficult route in a community lodging, coping with the traumas they have lived through in a problematic and damaging family situation, do not have the maturity and the inner stability to face up to such a difficult step, all alone and without social support.
This is why it is necessary to send this petition to the city of Milan to ask them to commit to supporting, even in the future, the arrangements connected with the “administrative continuation”. It is a crying shame that a big European metropolis is disinterested in the future of its young people, not taking on a necessary duty that has always brought good results, when so many tiny towns with much more serious financial problems do not slide out of giving support and dignity to those who have already suffered at a young age so many disadvantages and so much suffering in their lives.
Let us unite our voices to ask the city of Milan for a sign of civility.”

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Society