Technical Assistance for the Establishment of the Youth Advisory Board

With the recommendation of the European Council of 14 June 2021, a European Child Guarantee was established to prevent and combat social exclusion by ensuring that children and adolescents at risk of poverty or social exclusion have access to healthy food, adequate housing and free access to early childhood education and care, education (including school activities), a healthy meal for every school day and health care, with special attention also to the gender and to specific forms of disadvantage, such as minors who are homeless or in situations of severe housing deprivation; minors with disabilities; minors from a migrant background; minors belonging to racial or ethnic minorities (especially Roma); minors in alternative (especially institutional) care facilities; minors in precarious family situations.

In order to implement the priorities defined in the recommendation, the same document lays down that Member States where the child poverty rate is above the European average (this is the case in Italy) may use the ESF+ Fund to at least 5% of the total allocation for specific interventions to combat child poverty along the aforementioned priorities.

In order to plan the use of resources, Member States have to draw up a National Action Plan within 9 months from the date of approval of the measure (i.e., March 2022), involving the main stakeholders and taking into account the results of the pilot experimentation mentioned in the following point.

The Child Guarantee recommendation takes on board the principles of the EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child on participation, calling for the identification of participation mechanisms integrated in national systems that can support the implementation of the Child Guarantee action plan as well as its monitoring.

In compliance with European guidelines, the Youth Advisory Board - as the girls and boys involved in the Italian experience called themselves - was set up in December to test a mechanism of active participation by children and adolescents in institutional processes related to the Child Guarantee.

The Youth Advisory Board also includes young care leavers who are the beneficiaries of the experimentation and young people already involved in the experimentation aimed at the inclusion of Roma Sinti and Caminanti children and families.

Italy participates in the current experimentation phase, coordinated and supervised by the Department for Family Policies of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and the Ministry of Labour and Social Policies, with the support of Unicef.

Within this framework, the Istituto degli Innocenti participated in the reach out and involvement phase of children, girls and adolescents in order to form the Youth Advisory Board, and today it assists the Board by supporting the group. Among the beneficiaries of the models being tested, the Institute contacted young people who were members of the Advisory Board for the Council of Europe Strategy in July 2021.

The Youth Advisory Board was set up in December 2021 in Florence at the Istituto degli Innocenti. The meetings will continue, both online and face to face, in various locations in central Italy.

The Youth Advisory Board established in December 2021 will potentially be active until 2030. Its members will be confirmed every two years by agreement between the parties (CAB, Department for Family Policies, Ministry of Labour and Social Policies).