The family in institutional care

This work looks at the Institutional Foster Care Services for Children and Adolescents (SAICAs), especially at those who remain outside the home: the family members. Thus, anchored in Institutional Discourse Analysis, the work focuses above all on the relationship between the family and SAICA. Starting from the legal text and the historical production trajectory of these practices, it seeks to think about the expectations and institutional places that constitute them. In relation to the discourse of family members, it points out the encounters and disagreements that mark this relationship. These appear between the different institutional actors, marking places and displacing established positions, and the question is at stake: who is legitimately responsible for these children and adolescents? In the midst of this tension, it is possible to delineate a certain family designed at the interface with foster care, as well as a certain SAICA recognized in the discourse. This path invites us to (re)think the practices of institutional foster care and what places we attribute to the family and the service. And in this way, perhaps we can foster more powerful encounters between children, adolescents, family members and professionals in shelters and other settings.