Reflections on daily life and the habitat of children and adolescents in a shelter

Abstract

The daily life and the feeling of being home for children and adolescents in residential care in a shelter may have features of an ethnic and ethical breakdown. Thus, providing living conditions in shelters in order to provide protection, care and development opportunities for its residents has been an ongoing challenge for foster care policies in Brazil. The article presents a critical reflection, historical and conceptual, in an attempt to build a look on this multiple and complex subject. Based on the principle that these lifestyles are crossed by historical processes, social and political, the article presents a historical context of the institutionalization of children in Brazil, a reflection on the implementation of the measure of protection in post-ECA era and discusses about the dilemmas and challenges for foster family and institutional care and to the listening to the needs of children and adolescents. Finally, it presents a reflection on the conceptual and methodological framework to be used in the production of knowledge and social technologies, advocating the use of concepts of daily life and inhabiting that refer to the processuality of living in the world and provoke reflection on autonomy and participation issues. From a dimension of otherness, which considers the experience and the look of another, we believe that more effective actions could appear in shelters for children and adolescents.