This study investigated Social Care as an institution that creates mechanisms for the production of subjectivity in the care of children and adolescents. For this, we used some analytical coordinates, both conjectural and structural, models of care for mapping care in confrontation in the field of Social Care. It was concluded that there was two contradictory paradigms, in the dialectical sense, organizing social care, one being the philanthropic mode and the other the socioeducative mode. The first, which is hegemonic in the field, corresponds to a care entity still organized from philanthropic care and is guided by a minority age logic, articulated by a discourse of criminalizing the lower classes. It is informally based on the legal concept of irregular situations, which would develop preventive, repressive, correctional and moralizing care practices. The construction of a socioeducative mode implies socioeducative care that aims for an effective increase in the rights of children and adolescents, based on their status as subjects and citizens, through democratic, dialogic, participatory, multi-disciplinary and fundamentally emancipatory institutional practices.
Institutional analysis; Social care; Public policies; Social psychology