This research brings a reflexion on daily children and adolescents care based on the work developed in an institution (shelter). It is based on the emplacement of children and their family, as well as the institution and their agents, into the social discourse. The hypothesis adopted here is that several social practices in these institutions consist on practice models that framed childhood assistance - the charitable, the philanthropic and the State of social welfare -, each one assigning specific positions to families and institutional agents. These models are recapitulated, in order to highlight the central axes for which constitute. Then, this hypothesis is discussed using information from these day-to-day events in order to consider how the questioning of these positions may allow another positioning in listening and in the practices of psychologists in institutional care institutions.
shelters; public politics; Children and Adolescent Code; institutionalization; social practices