SCOTTISH legislation to better protect young people leaving care is a “road map” for other European countries to follow, according to an Italian politician looking to improve the care system in her own country.

Emanuela Rossini, who was elected as a member of the Italian parliament last year, visited Scotland earlier this month to meet with Scottish ministers and organisations supporting young people in care, in the hope that lessons learned could be use to help drive change in Italy.

She told the Sunday National that she was inspired by “advanced” Scottish legislation introduced in 2014, which put a legal duty on local authorities to allow eligible children to stay in care until age 21 and extended that duty to provide aftercare services until age 26.

She intends to lobby Italian ministers to follow suit, and will also urge them to learn from the Scottish Care Leavers Covenant, an agreement launched in 2016 to ensure care leavers are given better life changes, in implementing a rights-based approach.

Currently in Italy, support is often cut off completely when care leavers are 18, leaving them facing “instant adulthood”. Many are faced with homelessness and few continue into further education or training.

However Rossini – who represents the Trentino Tyrolean Autonomist Party – claimed there was a growing recognition of the problems facing Italy’s 27,000 care leavers, in part driven by young people from the Agevolando care leavers association. In response the Italian government is funding local authorities to trial new projects at a regional level, which is where Rossini hopes the Scottish approach could be tested. Structural change is expected to follow at a national level.

“At national level there are key people within the government, the parliament and the administrative national institutions who are very committed to the issue of child care and care leavers,” she said. “I will be working to bring the issues I’ve learned about [in Scotland] on the political agenda .

“I came here because your [Scottish] legislation is advanced. I wanted to see how you apply it and how it works.”

Rossini also met with Scottish care leavers, some of whom will attend a European conference later in the year. “It’s been very interesting for me to find out that care leavers here, and in Italy, say the same thing,” she added. “They are helping us to recognise these needs and how to respond. What Scotland is doing is really a road map.”

Kenny McGhee at Celcis (the Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland) and chair of the Scottish Care Leavers Covenant Alliance, who met with Rossini during her visit, said to date almost 800 organisations and individuals had signed up to the Scottish Care Leavers Covenant. “It is a bold commitment to young people in Scotland who have experience of the care system – that they matter.

“It aims to ensure that young people in Scotland only move on from care when they are ready to, and receive the support they need into adulthood.

“Scotland is leading the way with this. We are excited that the recent visit by the Italian MP, Emanuela Rossini, has sparked her interest in what we have learnt here in Scotland and how Italy could potentially introduce similar guidance to benefit the lives of young people.”

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “We welcome Rossini’s positive feedback.

“We are keen for Scotland to be a beacon of international best practice for young people growing up in care – who need and deserve a care system that makes good things happen for them as well as preventing harm.”