ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to present the critical issues that emerged in the N.A.Ve social protection programme in Italy. It will introduce an overview of the literature on social protection programmes, by drawing from academic scholars addressing social work, anti-trafficking interventions, asylum seeker and refugee reception. It will then present the challenges that Practitioners reported in dealing with beneficiaries, particularly the target group of Nigerian women. A temporal lens will be adopted to look at the challenges regarding the entry into, permanence in, and completion of the programmes, as well as two specific temporal phases: the COVID lockdown and beneficiaries’ transition to the age of majority. It will argue that the following dimensions best explain practitioners’ representations: social protection institutional cultures (victimisation, labelling, infantilisation), the increasing complexity of users’ profiles and insufficient attention to intersectional needs (gender, age, parenthood, etc.), structural issues, including, particularly, the fragmentation among the systems of asylum, anti-trafficking and welfare. The chapter will highlight individual, relational and structural elements that were reported to positively impact on the protection path of women: development of a significant relationship with one or more practitioners, beneficiaries’ skills and motivation, successful access to housing and employment upon completion of the programme.
