From Reception to Research: 2023 at the Istituto degli Innocenti in Numbers

From education to reception, from research to training, from documentation to the popularisation of a unique cultural heritage, 2023 saw full confirmation of the great commitment of the Istituto degli Innocenti to protect and promote the rights of children, young people and families, and to provide technical support, at national and regional level, to those called upon to draw up and implement policies and interventions aimed at minors. The Istituto degli Innocenti wanted to collect all the main results and objectives achieved during the past year in a single document in order to provide those who support its activities with an agile and illustrative overview of a year's work. Built in 1419 as an institution dedicated to caring for, educating and protecting children, the Institute is now a public sector company providing care services. An internal reorganisation has been implemented since January 2024 in order to better distribute responsibilities within the Institute, and develop staff and functions. Political-administrative guidance is provided by a five-member Board of Directors; the organisation has a General Management, and three organisational areas with 11 operational services reporting to them.

Education, reception and parenting support

The Institute owns three nurseries (Birillo, Trottola, Biglia) and the Girandola integrated 0-6 educational centre. It is also the headquarters of the Innocenti municipal kindergarten. The Institute's educational services and the municipal kindergarten are integrated into the offer of the City of Florence, and make up the Innocenti 0-6 Polo, which welcomes over 200 children and families every day. Recently, Crescere insieme (Growing Together) was introduced. This is a multi-purpose service offering educational and parenting support opportunities. Also on this front, the organisation has been managing a protected meetings service (since 2017) aimed at ensuring the right to maintain a relationship between children and non-cohabiting parents in situations of high complexity and distress. In 2023, 41 children were supported and 1,313 meetings were held. Since 2020, in collaboration with the Court of Florence, the Institute has offered the Bambini al Centro (Children at the Centre) service with mediation pathways in cases of judicial separation proceedings. In 2023 alone, 39 couples were supported and 86 meetings were held. In addition to educational services and parenting support activities, the Istituto degli Innocenti also runs a residential socio-educational service: there are currently four family-sized residential communities at the Institute, which in 2023 accommodated a total of 41 children and 21 mothers. As a result of the humanitarian emergency linked to the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, 20 children and young people from Ukraine accompanied by their guardians have been accommodated since March 2022.

Documentation, research, training and technical assistance

Since the late 1990s, the Institute has been a centre for research, documentation, training and technical assistance on childhood and adolescence. Constant monitoring of the status of implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the different aspects of life affecting children and adolescents provides useful information to develop and evaluate policies. It also offers concrete support for their national, regional and local planning. In fact, the Institute cooperates with the national government, the Region of Tuscany, other Regions, various other institutions and numerous local entities. The Institute supports the management of the National Documentation and Analysis Centre for Childhood and Adolescence, which performs important functions aimed at promoting, informing and communicating policies in favour of children and adolescents. In Tuscany, the Regional Documentation and Analysis Centres for Childhood and Adolescence is responsible for research, monitoring, information and training activities on interventions for children, adolescents and families. The Institute maintains databases, contributes to updating and implementing the regulatory framework of the Region of Tuscany and is a technical and scientific partner in the pedagogical field. Finally, it is engaged in international research activities: in 2023, it was involved in 2 projects supported by European funds and 2 projects supported by national funds, and submitted 10 projects on call for tenders. Specific agreements with the Ministry of Labour and Social Policies provide for technical and scientific assistance, documentation and statistical analysis, research and monitoring, training, and dissemination of information. These include support for relevant national experimentation projects such as the project for the inclusion and integration of Roma, Sinti and Caminanti children and Careleavers.

On the documentation front, it should be noted that the Alfredo Carlo Moro Innocenti Library has been active at the Institute since 2000. It holds a documentary heritage of 46,247 units and, together with the web portals (minori.gov.it and minoritoscana.it), guarantees public access to the bibliographic, legal and statistical knowledge resources developed by the Institute as a documentation centre. Every year there are hundreds of library accesses and loans. Another ongoing commitment is to training: the Institute is a training agency accredited by both the Ordine degli Assistenti sociali (Register of Social Workers) and the Italian Ministry of Education. Training, both face-to-face and distance, is mainly for professionals working on childhood and adolescence, but also directly for adolescents, as shown by the Patentino Digitale (Digital Licence), developed with the Tuscan branch of Corecom (Regional Committee for Communication). In 2023, the Institute organised 117 seminars and training days; 393 distance learning courses with 15,675 participants. The intense activity of study, research and training is reflected in a rich production of reports and publications.

Protection and popularisation of cultural heritage and memory

The Institute holds a unique cultural heritage, consisting of works of art, documents and archival artefacts, which it protects, preserves and popularises on a daily basis. The historical archive holds more than 13,000 archival units, the oldest dating back as far as the 13^th century, and is an invaluable source not only for the evolution of the Institute but also for child care and the history of the city over the centuries. With the support of the Foundation Istituto degli Innocenti Ets, it started a process of preservation, inventorying and digitisation of the more than 40,000 identification tokens kept in the Historical Archive, on which the permanent exhibition “And the Other Half I Shall Keep” was based. The Museum is accredited as a museum of regional and national significance and is a member of the Musei di tutti (Museums for All) network. In recent years, the number of visitors has been steadily increasing: 55,000 in 2019, over 80,000 in 2022 and more than 130,000 in 2023, also thanks to the growing offer of temporary exhibitions. Established in 2006, the Bottega dei Ragazzi (Children’s Workshop), the Museum's educational section which is also part of the Keys to the City programme, held 150 workshops last year, involving 136 classes and around 2,000 children and young people. Its cultural heritage, as well as the real estate assets used by third parties, requires constant ordinary and extraordinary maintenance. In 2023, there were 58 lease agreements and 9 loan-for-use agreements on the numerous real estate units. A total of 259 ordinary and extraordinary maintenance interventions were carried out, concerning the Institute’s headquarters, along with 14 interventions on external properties.

The report on 2023 activities is available here.