A práxis do psicólogo nos equipamentos de acolhimento institucional: desafios e possibilidades

Abstract

From the enactment of the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil, in 1988, welfare has assumed the nature of a Social Security Policy, along with Health and Social Welfare, being reframed and drifted away from the paternalist and charitable role assumed so far. Due to this new condition of Social Welfare in the country, legal procedures have been created and taken to organize services, programs, projects and benefits, based in territory and family centrality. Within these procedures, we can find the Special Social Protection, which is family-oriented and focused on the social care of individuals who are endangered due to abandonment, physical or psychological maltreatment, sexual abuse, use of psychoactive substances, among others, aiming to strengthen and recover community and family bonds, or helping to build new references. The institutionalization of children and adolescents in Brazil is currently backed by the Statute of the Child and Adolescent and mediated by the Special Social Protection, where the presence of Psychology professionals is mandatory. In order to comprehend the dynamics and challenges faced by psychologists working in institutions that shelter children and adolescents, this paper consists of a qualitative-exploratory research, that aimed to identify the practices of psychologists in the “Institutional Shelter” category, evaluate the limits for their interventions and analyze the main challenges to be faced in institutional practice. For this, the research method consisted of a semi-structured interview with two psychologists working in institutional shelters from the Baixada Fluminense counties, which were analyzed through the Community Psychology views. It was observed that the practices in these institutions is aimed at the strengthening of identity of the sheltered individuals through the promotion of ludic activities and group and individual talk. The main challenges for the professional acting come from the deadlocks regarding the establishment of intersectionality through the network mechanisms of Social Fare in the counties, and the limits for their acting are related to the difficulty in having the specificity of their profession recognized by members of the judiciary and their own working team. Besides, the lack of specific theoretical references in institutional shelter services makes it impossible to standardize the practice, as it is preconized in the Single System of Social Assistance. The obtained results show that, even with the lack of references, the acting of psychologists in this context aims the social change through awareness of sheltered individuals about the place they occupy in society.