Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

They can become “fosters” single people or couples, married or cohabiting without age restrictions.
The availability of singles is most requested for situations of older children or teenagers, capable of making the most of even a single adult figure with parental functions. While children in early childhood need a parental couple or families with children.

Families who are available for foster care participate in an information and in-depth process.
The Reliance Coordination organizes a group information meeting, followed by two training meetings and an individual learning process, which includes some interviews and a home visit. 
The acquaintance interviews, conducted by a social worker and psychologist, are aimed at encouraging in the couple/individual a concrete reflection shared with the operators on the availability/resources of the family/person. In the case of families with children, these are normally known to the operators during the home visit.
This path, based on a "reflective dialogue", allows us to decline in a concrete and feasible way the availability, limits and needs of the family offering foster care, in relation to the situations of the children and their families.
Once the knowledge process has been completed, the "family resource" is available to the Foster Care Coordination Service of the Municipality of Milan, which verifies whether a match with children and young people awaiting foster care is possible. Proposing a sustainable and compatible foster care intervention for both the minor and the foster family is a challenge that involves uncertainties in waiting times.
Once the "best match" has been identified, the aspiring foster family and the Territorial Professional Social Service meet to acquire elements of knowledge and understand the commitment required by the foster care project, the duration and the particular needs of the child. 
At this point the delicate and engaging phase of getting to know each other begins. In this phase the foster family is supported by the operators who have known them.

For each family foster care project i Territorial Professional Social Services sign, with the two families, foster and natural, a Trust agreement within which the intervention project is developed.

Upon signing the Trust Agreement, the municipal administration sends the foster family a foster care letter with which formalize the placement of the minor with the foster family.

The reasons for fostering cannot be summarized; they cannot be counted. There is no official list, there is no collection of standard answers in which to find one's motivation, in which to look for the reflection of one's feelings.

There are only nuances. The nuances of the heart and reason, of love and challenge, of solidarity and civic sense.

Why foster care, any foster care, is an intimate and personal choice, the result of a path that belongs only to oneself and which, as such, has no labels, no absolute definitions.

For some foster parents it is a desire that has distant roots, which go back to their childhood and cling to their family of origin. For others it is one of the fruits of the newly created couple, of parenthood or of the most recent experiences. For some families, an awareness has developed over time, in silence and without attracting attention. For others, a sudden impulse that one day appears in the routine of their days and overturns every certainty.

For everyone, a great adventure that helps you grow.

During the foster care process, the foster family or person has constant contact with the local Social Service for everything related to the foster care project and makes use of the Foster Care Coordination for individual and group support.
In particularly complex foster care situations and for limited but intense periods, the Coordination of foster care together with the Territorial Professional Social Service can activate educational/pedagogical support in support of foster care and its actors with the aim of:
•    facilitate the start or end phase of the foster care 
•    support the subjects involved in the face of periods of fatigue and developmental transition of the child/adolescent in the two family contexts, between different educational/relational models and styles
•    facilitate communication between all the actors in the foster care project (child, children in the foster care unit, natural parents, foster parents).

By signing the Trust Agreement, the municipal administration:

•  initiates the disbursement of a monthly sum of money to contribute to the maintenance costs of the minor, and examines requests for any extraordinary expenses, intervening within the limits of available financial resources; 
•  the insurance coverage provided by the Lombardy Region for family foster care is active (injuries to the minor and civil liability, damage caused by the minor to third parties or to the foster family).

Tariff concessions are available for the frequency and use of some Milanese public services.

• National guidelines for family foster care
• Regional guidelines for family foster care
• Ministry brochure
• Guidelines for family foster care for children and teenagers
• Shared insights
• Bibliography I foster Luzi
• Bibliography bis
• Documents on family foster care - CNSA