L'Aquila tribunal orders gradual reunification after 10 months in care, but sets no date for full return as parents' lawyer vows to appeal.The children at the centre of Italy's "forest family" case will not be returning home immediately, a juvenile court has ruled, setting out a staged path towards reunification rather than the swift homecoming their parents had sought.The juvenile court of L'Aquila ruled on Tuesday that the three children, currently living in a care home in Vasto, on the Abruzzo coast, must remain there for now and continue attending the local state school. In a month's time, provided social workers approve, they will be allowed to spend some weekends at their parents' house in Palmoli, also in the central Abruzzo region. No date has yet been set for the point at which they might return home permanently, and further stages of the reintegration process have not been made public. The family's lawyer, Simone Pillon, a former right-wing Lega senator known for his advocacy on conservative Catholic causes, said he had hoped for a faster reunification and announced he would appeal the ruling. He noted that the children would nonetheless be allowed to spend days immediately at the Palmoli house with their parents, though they must return to the care home to sleep. How the case began The case has gripped Italy since last autumn, when a court ordered the children removed from the family home near Palmoli, in the province of Chieti, after judging the property unsuitable for their needs. The family, headed by Australian-British mother Catherine Birmingham and British father Nathan Trevallion, had chosen to live in a small rural house with structural problems and no indoor bathroom. The three children, a nine-year-old daughter and seven-year-old twins, were being educated at home rather than attending school. The L'Aquila juvenile court initially ordered that the children live in the Vasto care home together with their mother. In March, however, the tribunal took the more drastic step of separating Birmingham from her children too, citing reports from the facility describing her behaviour as hostile and uncooperative. That ruling, which also split the siblings between different structures for a period, provoked warnings from Italy's children's ombudsman that further separation risked compounding the trauma the children had already suffered. In the months since, according to Pillon, the family has addressed the concerns raised by the court: the housing situation has been resolved, the parents have voluntarily undertaken a parenting support programme, and the children have passed their end-of-year school exams. He argues that even the court's own technical consultant now favours the children's return home, making continued placement in care hard to justify. Political context The case has become a touchstone in a wider Italian debate over the boundaries of state intervention in family life and parental rights over education and lifestyle choices, drawing commentary from politicians, children's advocates and the Catholic-leaning press. Pillon, who took over the family's legal defence in May, has used the case to campaign against what he and other conservative commentators describe as excessive readiness by Italian courts and social services to remove children from their families. Supporters of the family have framed the case as state overreach against an unconventional but not harmful way of life; critics of the parents' choices have maintained that the children's rights to education, socialisation and adequate living conditions justified the original intervention. The ruling handed down this week represents a partial, incremental win for the family, offering a route back to normal life without granting the immediate reunification they had sought. Pillon has said he will press the court for a faster resolution, arguing that 10 months is already "an infinite amount of time" for children to spend separated from their parents.

The children at the centre of Italy's "forest family" case will not be returning home immediately, a juvenile court has ruled, setting out a staged path towards reunification rather than the swift homecoming their parents had sought. The juvenile court of L'Aquila ruled on Tuesday that the three children, currently living in a care home in Vasto, on the Abruzzo coast, must remain there for now and continue attending the local state school. In a month's time, provided social workers approve, they will be allowed to spend some weekends at their parents' house in Palmoli, also in the central Abruzzo region. No date has yet been set for the point at which they might return home permanently, and further stages of the reintegration process have not been made public. The family's lawyer, Simone Pillon, a former right-wing Lega senator known for his advocacy on conservative Catholic causes, said he had hoped for a faster reunification and announced he would appeal the ruling. He noted that the children would nonetheless be allowed to spend days immediately at the Palmoli house with their parents, though they must return to the care home to sleep. The case has gripped Italy since last autumn, when a near Palmoli, in the province of Chieti, after judging the property unsuitable for their needs. The family, headed by Australian-British mother Catherine Birmingham and British father Nathan Trevallion, had chosen to live in a small rural house with structural problems and no indoor bathroom. The three children, a nine-year-old daughter and seven-year-old twins, were being educated at home rather than attending school. The L'Aquila juvenile court initially ordered that the children live in the Vasto care home together with their mother. In March, however, the tribunal took the more drastic step of separating Birmingham from her children too, citing reports from the facility describing her behaviour as hostile and uncooperative. That ruling, which also split the siblings between different structures for a period, provoked warnings from Italy's children's ombudsman that further separation risked compounding the trauma the children had already suffered. In the months since, according to Pillon, the family has addressed the concerns raised by the court: the housing situation has been resolved, the parents have voluntarily undertaken a parenting support programme, and the children have passed their end-of-year school exams. He argues that even the court's own technical consultant now favours the children's return home, making continued placement in care hard to justify. The case has become a touchstone in a wider Italian debate over the boundaries of state intervention in family life and parental rights over education and lifestyle choices, drawing commentary from politicians, children's advocates and the Catholic-leaning press. Pillon, who took over the family's legal defence in May, has used the case to campaign against what he and other conservative commentators describe as excessive readiness by Italian courts and social services to remove children from their families. Supporters of the family have framed the case as state overreach against an unconventional but not harmful way of life; critics of the parents' choices have maintained that the children's rights to education, socialisation and adequate living conditions justified the original intervention. The ruling handed down this week represents a partial, incremental win for the family, offering a route back to normal life without granting the immediate reunification they had sought. Pillon has said he will press the court for a faster resolution, arguing that 10 months is already "an infinite amount of time" for children to spend separated from their parents.