The study analyzes how vulnerability constellations and out-of-home placement processes in early childhood are socially pedagogically negotiated and what becomes relevant for decision-making in this context. In the area of child protection, temporary custody, and out-of-home placement, the study develops vulnerability and crisis theoretical perspectives on early childhood. Decision-making is conceived as a social practice that is examined ethnographically and process-sociologically in the field of social pedagogical crisis intervention. The twelve reconstructed support trajectories oscillate between the empowerment and disempowerment of the family, refer to the latent ideal of 'familialized childhood,' and culminate, against the backdrop of vulnerability constellations, in a typology of out-of-home placement processes.