The reading path of this new issue of the Rassegna bibliografica focuses on the contemporary debate on residential care for children, highlighting two different points of view: on the one hand, those who support the idea that residential care should be superseded altogether and, on the other hand, those who argue for the need to implement residential intervention models that prove to provide good practice and satisfactory results.

The filmographic journey, through a presentation of films from the 1940s to the present day, offers a reflection on the orphanage, often characterised as a place of social isolation, instinctively disturbing for a society based on the family. But there are also different representations of these structures as places where it was possible to find acceptance and understanding and to meet important reference figures far from rigid and uniforming “institutional” schemes.