Palmoli, meeting between parents and children is skipped: controversy over social services

After waiting for the whole day, the meeting in Palmoli between parents and children from the forest was canceled at the last moment, "due to lack of safety conditions". He would have been the first in the house offered free of charge to the family following the order of the Juvenile Court for the return 'in stages', ten months after the suspension of parental responsibility for father Nathan and mother Catherine and the placement of the three little brothers in a family home in Vasto. Cities where they will go to school from tomorrow, abandoning homeschooling.

"It was, unfortunately, moved to another location, despite the fact that the mayor of Palmoli, at the request of the parents, had cordoned off the area to guarantee privacy" explained the family's lawyer, Simone Pillon. The social service workers, he adds, "forced us to cancel the return of the children to Palmoli and to hold the meeting in the usual protected location". "It's unfortunate - he concludes - because the little ones had been waiting for this moment for ten months and their wait was disappointed." Journalists and crew had left the house invited to do so by the mayor and Catherine herself. "It's something truly incredible - comments the mayor Giuseppe Masciulli -. It seems to me, I repeat, that this entire bureaucratic infrastructure has everything at heart except the children's interest, given the times that are artificially extended by finding an excuse every time it has to move forward. There has been this opposition from the social services, as if every time they were looking for the slightest impediment to delay this program of reintegration of children into the family".

To date, he recalls, "weekly returns to Palmoli after school are scheduled for children, on risky roads with winter temperatures, with rain, fog, if not with snow, a situation of extreme discomfort. I see it as a choice that is not very responsive to the well-being of minors. The main critical issues had already been resolved after two months from the Court's order of November 2025. It seems to me that with these proceedings the protection of minors has moved to last place". The continuation of the matter, moreover, also affects the coffers of the small municipality which "continues to pay 7,500 euros per month for the 'fee' of the family home in Vasto because Italian law requires it". "We cannot avoid it, 7,500 euros a month for 10 months is 75 thousand euros, a particularly important figure for a municipality of only 850 inhabitants - highlights the mayor -. At the end of the year we should receive contributions from the Ministry of the Interior and the social sector body, but it is not certain that these contributions will cover the entire amount".