A participação da família no processo de acolhimento institucional de crianças e adolescentes

Abstract

The Child and Adolescent Statute (ECA) is considered an important and fundamental milestone in the care and attention to children and adolescents, due to the change in perspective when dealing with this public, considering them as subjects of rights and people in a peculiar condition. In this sense, it demands a system of integral protection to guarantee rights. The ECA provided for a series of protection measures for children and youth at risk, among them, there is the institutional care policy, which should only occur as a last alternative, as it represents a setback in terms of the right to family and community life. This research turns to analyze the participation of families in the process of institutional care for children and adolescents and, in order to respond to this objective, four specific objectives were listed: a) To understand the dynamics of the functioning of the care units since the children/adolescents’s admission until their shutdown; b) Identify and analyze how the family monitoring of the families of children/adolescents in institutional care is carried out; c) Identify and analyze what the professionals understand about the families of children/adolescents who have gone through or are still in institutional care; d) Identify whether the pandemic had an impact on the participation and coexistence between the family and the children/adolescents who are in institutional care. We used the historical and dialectical materialist method, and as a methodological tool we conducted interviews with professionals from the reception units in Natal/RN. Due to the pandemic, collective and semi-structured interviews took place through an online platform and eight (8) professionals participated. Subsequently, the interviews were transcribed and analyzed taking into account the axes and questions of the interview script that helped to answer the objectives of this research. We can conclude that the participation of the family in the institutional care process for children/adolescents is a movement permeated by contradictions, as is the insertion of the family in Brazilian social policies. As seen, aspects related to the understanding of “little family” or “a lot of family” in the institutional care process for children/adolescents can present a variety of meanings. So, in general, the familist perspective is still very present. Another aspect that was observed is that the family continues to be blamed, even when there is a lack of public policies and basic rights for families and their children/adolescents to live with dignity and with respect for the right to family and community life. Thus, we realize that the participation of the family in institutional care is seen by the professionals interviewed as important, however, it seems to us that it still occurs in an insufficient way and is also permeated by moralizing conceptions.