Total Institutions and “Submerged” Violence: an European Project

The PREVIO project “Preventing Submerged Violence” – funded by the European Commission under the Daphne III Programme – has addressed possible forms of disease, abuse and violence within the framework of care institutions for elderly people and minors. The intervention has directly involved three countries – Italy, Romania and Spain – in the development of a research, a training process and an evaluation of the achieved results. The main line of analysis of the research work has been the comparison between care institutions and those known as “total institutions” in literature, in order to identify and underline possible similarities – especially for those aspects regarding the internal structure and organization – and the related consequences in terms of disease for people who work and live in such settings. A special attention has been dedicated to the relationships between the different categories of people who live and work in care institutions, as well as between the different decisional and management levels. The relevance of the project has not run out on the chosen topic – quite unconventional in the survey of sociological research – but it has found its highest expression in the will to identify instruments and operational practices able to contribute to the improvement of care services and to the promotion of the well-being of the two key-actors: caregivers and final users.