Abstract Decisions regarding children’s residential care reorganisation are primarily based on an adult’s perspective of children’s wellbeing and care. While these adults tend to be well-intended and base their decisions off relevant evidence, the children’s perspectives ‐ which reflects their actual lived experiences ‐ is almost never considered. However, since children are experts of their own lives, they should have the right to participate and express their opinion: Their point of view could be of great value in developing residential child care. In this article, we provide SOS children’s insights into their own life experiences and individual identities. The data was collected during an ethnographic research in one of Estonia’s SOS Children’s Villages (SOS CV). This article aims to answer to following research questions: 1. What are the main topics in SOS children’s stories when they talk about themselves and their everyday lives in substitute homes? 2. What kind of identity can be determined from children’s stories? 3. How can the subtext within the children’s stories be used to develop a child-centred residential care? In this article, we present and discuss several key-findings. First, it is important to note that there are gaps in the children’s life stories, as they sometimes lack information about important people and events in their lives. Second, this lack of adequate information can damage the children's identities and, in turn, undermine their development. Third, the opportunity to talk about important life events encourages the children to ask questions, as they are interested in obtaining additional information to complete the gaps. Fourth, the children’s stories indicate the shortcomings of substitute homes, related to both culture and communication.

中文翻译：

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我是谁，我来自哪里？替代寄宿家庭 儿童对生活和个人身份的洞察

摘要 关于儿童寄宿家庭护理重组的决定主要基于成人对儿童福祉和护理的看法。虽然这些成年人往往是善意的，并根据相关证据做出决定，但孩子们的观点——反映了他们的实际生活经历——几乎从未被考虑过。但是，由于儿童是自己生活的专家，他们应该有权参与并表达自己的意见：他们的观点对发展寄宿儿童保育具有重要价值。在这篇文章中，我们提供 SOS 儿童对他们自己的生活经历和个人身份的见解。这些数据是在爱沙尼亚的一个 SOS 儿童村 (SOS CV) 进行的民族志研究期间收集的。本文旨在回答以下研究问题：1. 当 SOS 儿童谈论他们自己和他们在替代家庭中的日常生活时，他们的故事中的主要话题是什么？2、从儿童故事中可以确定什么样的身份？3. 如何利用儿童故事中的潜台词来发展以儿童为中心的寄宿照料？在本文中，我们介绍并讨论了几个关键发现。首先，重要的是要注意儿童的生活故事存在空白，因为他们有时缺乏关于他们生活中重要人物和事件的信息。其次，缺乏足够的信息会损害儿童的身份，进而影响他们的发展。第三，谈论重要生活事件的机会鼓励孩子提出问题，因为他们有兴趣获得额外的信息来填补空白。第四，