This article participates in the contemporary debate about the social management of the rights of children and adolescents, particularly in local and institutional dynamics of protection and public assistance. To this end, we approached some institutional subjects and spaces articulated with the Colombian Family Welfare Institute (ICBF) in the city of Cali, in order to document some of the effects of the new comprehensive protection law (Law 1098/2006, Code on Children and Adolescents) in the discursiveness of those in charge of operationalizing its provisions. This approach, built through semi-structured interviews and supplemented with local press information, shows a legal field full of ambiguities and contradictions, where legal sensitivities are woven with an orientation towards the inscription of children and adolescents in both citizenship discourses and discourses of compassion/repression.