This work is based on analysing the annual reports from the inspectors of the children in care service which they addressed to the Council General of the Ain Department. Thanks to the themes brought to the fore, to the length of the developments, those documents are enlightening us about the preoccupations of the inspectors, the way in which they were keeping in touch with the children and how they perceived them. Inspectors are thus delivering us, in a synthetic and filtered way, a vision that allows us to capture the trajectories of the adolescent children in care and to perceive widely shared daily realities (school attendance, activity, savings), and, further, contrasting behaviours (acts of violence, either endured or exerted, health problems, natural pregnancy or early marriage).