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Our clinical experience in an emergency shelter has helped us to see that the trauma of the children admitted leaves noisy or insidious traces within the institutional environment. These children with destructive instinctual drive forces attack both the group of carers and the walls of the institution. In parallel, the group of professionals may end up functioning as a mirror of the population receiving shelter. In this context, the group phenomenon highlights a phenomenon of exacerbated co-excitation, which very soon becomes difficult to contain. The suffering of the children also becomes that of the institution, due to contamination, and is translated by a group unconscious that loses its containing capacity. The clinician is then faced with an urgent need to restore the damaged contents. The proposition of resorting to an innovative tool of mediation called the “marvellous institution” might then serve as a support for getting the therapeutic function going again.