Residential care: research pathways in residential care for children

The residential care for children can be conceived as ''experiential fields'', places of shared experience, where, in the here and now of the everyday life and in the interweaving of stories, experiences, cultures, world views, predispositions and other needs, the ''inhabitants'' of the residential context (children and educators) weave complex relational networks. Starting from this approach, the interest that drove the research project and the intervention here presented is the exploration of these experiential fields and the way in which they work, defining the setting of clinical work and training in which to open pathways of transformation. About the evaluation of the clinical work and the quality of services offered to children in residential care, this project aims to deepen the knowledge of people living in the residential context (children and operators), focusing the attention on their relational world and on the ways in which actions and relationships are intertwined and trigger processes of change. In this contribution we will focus a) on the self and family representations; b) on the interpersonal relationships and c) on their change over time, of the children hosted in three residential care in Palermo. The observation was conducted with a multi-method, using different theoretic matrices tools: the DSSVF (Symbolic Drawing of Family Life Area, Gilli, Greco, Regalia, Banzatti, 1992; Gozzoli, Tamanza, 1998), the IRT ( Interpersonal Relationships Test; Bracken, 1993) and the TMA (Bracken, 1992). The results for the re-test show changes and different trends in the responses of subjects in the three residential care for children involved in this research project.