As ações das equipes volantes dos Centros de Referência de Assistência Social no Rio Grande do Norte

Abstract

One of the main assumptions for understanding the s ocial assistance as a public policy is the principle of territorialization, which means recogn izing that the particularities of the territory make a difference in the management of the policy. To operationalize this and other principles, the National Social Assistance Policy i s organized in the Unified Social Assistance System (SUAS) which, in turn, is divided between basic and special social protections. The organization of basic social prote ction is a responsibility of the CRAS, whose purpose is to act in the prevention of social risks through the development of potentials and the strengthening of family and comm unity ties. In contexts in which the territory has great extent, spreading, difficult ac cess and/or presence of traditional populations, such as indigenous communities and qui lombolas, the mobile teams are deployed and integrated into the staff of the CRAS. I n Rio Grande do Norte, they are present in small cities and near rural areas, where there i s a higher incidence of extreme poverty. By associating the work of the mobile teams and the co ntext of the fight against poverty in rural areas of Rio Grande do Norte, some questions emerged : how has this work been? What is its basis? Who is involved? Are the demands private? Ar e there differences between the work of the mobile teams and of the CRAS? What are the diffic ulties? How is the work done? Thus, the general objective of this study was to investig ate how the performance of CRAS’ mobile teams meets the demands of the territories they cov er in Rio Grande do Norte. For this, all existing mobile teams in the state were mapped and then we made eight semi-structured interviews with teams that work in seven small town s in RN. The information was systematized and grouped into general categories fo r qualitative analysis of textual content in an attempt to understand the reality investigated i n its entirety and processuality. The results show that the mobile teams investigated are still r ecent in the state. They are composed predominantly of social workers, but professionals of psychology and pedagogy also take part in some teams. In general, given the recency, lack of infrastructure and the number of rural communities scattered throughout the territor y, the presence of the teams in rural areas becomes sporadic and ultimately the continuity of a ctions is undermined. In addition, the knowledge of the professionals about the reality of the territories still appears to be precarious, as the search for demands and the famil ies’ needs is not systematic and organized. Nevertheless, we found that some teams perform stra tegies and actions that seek to overcome the existing limits and the traditional assistencia lism, working in partnership with community organizations, social movements and other social eq uipments that are closer to the families.