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The Fédération Hospitalo-Universitaire – Protection Ensemble Avançons ! (FHU-PEA), which brings together four universities (Amiens, Caen, Lille, and Rouen-Le Havre-Evreux), aims to longitudinally evaluate and monitor 300 children entrusted to child protection services in Normandy over a two-year period. The aim of the study is to determine the physical and psychological health of children, regardless of the age at which they are entrusted full-time to protective services (nursery, home, foster family). In the current absence of systematically collected medical (physical, psychological), educational, and social data, only prospective and longitudinal research can fill this data gap. In France, we know very little about the state of children’s mental health throughout their life in care, or even when they enter care, even though they have often been severely neglected and/or physically, psychologically, and sexually abused. The scarcity of studies on child protection is due not only to the relatively recent interest in these populations but also to the many obstacles specific to these situations that stand in the way of researchers. Research on vulnerable populations (minors) must, by definition, meet heightened ethical requirements and requires the agreement of those responsible for the child, in the belief that they will do what is in the child’s best interest by accepting or refusing. However, it is precisely those with parental authority who have been unable to meet the child’s basic needs, or else the child would not have been entrusted to a custodial service. What’s more, the information needed to assess the child’s physical and mental state, and the need for his or her care, is also dependent on these same guardians, who may refuse to provide information about their own problems when these are necessary to understand the child’s needs (e.g., taking drugs during pregnancy, family history). These difficulties, a veritable obstacle course to obtain the possibility of a full assessment, are also indicative of French law and the absence of operational practices genuinely focused on the child’s needs and rights (in the sense of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child ratified by France). These obstacles, their links with current practices, and a few ways of overcoming them will be developed here.