Equità e qualità per l’infanzia
EQUI_06, winner of the Polisocial Award 2021, aims to investigate the process of implementation of the 0-6 Integrated System in urban contexts, particularly in areas at higher risk of educational poverty. Scientific literature and international organizations agree on identifying early childhood education and care (ECEC) services as a cornerstone of the Social Investment approach: policy interventions that generate significant individual and social returns. The 06 services accomplish multiple functions:
- Support to work-family balance, fundamental for female employment;
- Early education, fostering cognitive and relational development in children while partially compensating for inequalities linked to family background;
- Social monitoring, especially in disadvantaged neighborhoods, offering valuable opportunities for social integration for vulnerable families.
The Italian system is characterized by a clear separation between the 3-5 age segment, which is highly institutionalized and nearly universal, and the 0-2 segment, which is less developed and marked by challenging trade-offs between the quantity and quality of services and selection effects that particularly exclude the most vulnerable families—those who would benefit the most.
Realizing the 0-6 Integrated System, introduced in 2017 Legislative Decree No. 65, requires a series of complex and delicate interventions that, despite a multi-level framework, largely rely on the local scale for concrete implementation, especially in the implementation of territorial childhood hubs (“Poli per l’infanzia”). The 0-6 services are highly heterogeneous in terms of type of providers, access criteria, public-private partnerships, and educational projects. The facilities hosting these services also vary widely in ownership, type of building, and location within the urban fabric. This diversity must be thoroughly understood to identify strengths and weaknesses to be considered in the process of implementation of integrated territorial hubs that ensure educational continuity and maximize their potential as community-based services, expanding their functions, engaging with surrounding contexts, and adopting a holistic approach involving the entire educating community.
The project adopts Milan as a case study, as a context of intense ECEC demand, heterogenous supply and complex governance. It develops a pilot study in Milan, based on:
- a city-level fine-grained mapping of ECEC services, of their functioning and regulation features, and of their organizational and governance relations, as well as of the socio-economic characteristics of the local areas in which they are located;
- a neighborhood-level qualitative analysis of services, actors and activities that can be understood as part of the local educating community, as well as spaces and places within the proximity outreach of 06-aged children and of their carers, and their uses;
- a co-design activity, participated by ECEC services staff, parents and children, aimed at defining and realizing light spatial interventions to increase the degree of integration between the currently separated 0-2 and 3-5 facilities.
Stemming from a localized research and place-based experimentation, the project aims at scaling up results, through a continuous reference to the national regulatory framework and to innovative local case studies, and seeks to identify strategic insights for the implementation of 0-6 territorial hubs in complex urban contexts, promoting both equity and quality.
Duration
March 15, 2022 – October 15, 2023
Team LPS
Stefania Sabatinelli, Marta Cordini
Consortium
Politecnico di Milano (DAStU, DIG and DESIGN Departments); Municipality of Milan, Early Childhood Services Area; Gruppo Nazionale Nidi Infanzia (National Study Group on Early Childhood Education and Care), INDIRE; Save the Children; LegaCoop Lombardia
Funding Body
Politecnico di Milano, Polisocial Award 2021
Website
https://www.equi06.polimi.it