The Foundation Child promotes research and study’s activities on childhood and adolescence by allocating a financial aid to the WHO – World Health Organisation, in order to support research programmes on children mental health, by co-organising, as well, seminars and meetings attended by the most leading experts of the mental health and pediatrics field coming from all over the world.

During the IACAPAP Congress in Stockholm in 1998, Foundation Child sponsored a symposium on the psychological and traumatic aspects on child and adolescent in wartime context, with the participation of many child and adolescent psychiatrists and childhood experts coming from countries involved in war conflicts. The seminar launched a programme that during the years resulted in the signature of The Rome Declaration on Caring for Children in Wartime, Terrorism and Natural Disasters, during the IACAPAP Congress in Rome in 2003.

Class Activation Program – Intervention in Mass Disaster Context Centered on Children’s Needs.
Psychopathology researches on children and adolescent following a mass disaster, show that from 25 to 80% of the cases suffer of psychiatric disturbances that range from post-traumatic stress disorders, general anxiety, separation anxiety, agoraphobias, panic attacks, major depression, behavioural disturbances to problem connected to alcohol abuse. In Italy, the intervention programme was lead in the suburbs of the Molise region affected by the earthquake in 2002. The CAP-Molise project came from a collaboration between the Child Foundation, the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Chair of the Modena and Reggio Emilia University and the Cohen-Harris Centre for Trauma and Disaster Intervention of Tel Aviv. The foundation and the two universities, planned the research and the scientific exchange focused on the intervention of mental health professionals on children and adolescents in emergency and trauma contexts. In the immediate aftermath of the Molise earthquake an equipe formed by professionals of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, the Cohen-Harris Centre and the Team Emergenza of Telefono Azzurro, planned a mental health intervention on the most affected communities, with particular regard to children and adolescents, in association with “F. Jovine” school in Molise and its teachers, in order to develop a large scale effective programme.