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Within the Brazilian strategy to reform out-of-home care services, efforts have been directed to the prioritization of foster care over congregate care. This study draws from the perspective that childhood is socially construed, therefore child protection systems are dependent of notions and ideals of childhood, especially concerning the child deprived of parental care. Interviews with ten professionals involved in the implementation and execution of foster care services in different cities were conducted for this study. Thematic analysis of interviews was triangulated with the contents of National Guidelines for out-of-home care services and legal provisions with the aim of investigating how ideas on children deprived of parental care and their best interests are translated into practice. Three research questions guided the study: (1) how participants perceive the out-of-home care reform and the provisions of rights in different care modalities, especially regarding how children placed in different types of out-of-home care are perceived, (2) how participants view children’s best interests and which practices are believed to secure them and (3) how practitioners’ views relate to the contents of the National Guidelines. Five themes emerged in the analysis: a scientific and legal defense of (1) foster care as the most up to date form of out-of-home care, the prioritization of (2) children’s needs for individualized parental care, that (3) practitioners’ strong discretion is conditioned by foster families’ choices, that (4) institutionalization and group are detrimental to children, and the invocation that (5) children must be onboard. The study concludes that a clearer conceptualization of the rights and bests interests of children deprived of parental is required to better inform the reform of child protection and its practices, where consideration to children’s participation could be extended over acceptance to decisions.

No description available.