[Foster home : a hidden resource.]

In this article, the author offers a critique of a social resource, the Foster Home (Famille d'Accueil), and how it is presently organized in Québec, following a study of the topic during a trip to Montréal in May 1987. As is the case most of the time, resorting to foster homes is based on no objective other than an economic one, that of providing lodging to a beneficiary. The many dysfunctions of such a practice have for long been denounced, yet we have hardly dealt with the specificity of this formula which is somewhere between the social and therapeutic spec-trums. Even then, the system should allow for the integration of emotional or social aspects that normally emerge in a family. Quebec's institutional framework omits this specificity, a phenomenon amplified by accepted practices in mental health that do not encourage working in groups. What lies behind the resource we call foster homes?