Program of support and attention to families who live socio environmental vulnerabilities in the South of Brazil

Abstract

This program has its origin in the partnership of the Center for the Studies of At-Risk Populations (CEPRUA) and the Center for Children and Adolescents’Attention (CAIC) of the Fundação Universidade Federal do Rio Grande. Both centers joined efforts to potentialize actions towards interventions in order to better understand and assist families who live poverty in the surround areas of the Federal University, in the extreme south of Brazil. The program has been developing psychoeducational and social activities aiming to attend children, adolescents and their families as well as the social agents who work for the services in the social support network such as, teachers, community health agents, social youth counselors and community leaders of the neighborhoods. The families receive attention through different resources planned to assist either individuals or groups: organized and systematic meetings with health and educational professionals; projects to qualify individuals’ abilities to types of work that improve family income; actions to prevent child abuse and domestic violence and still proposals to increase opportunities to discuss and participate in the political decisions of each community. All these activities are guided by the principles of the ecologic engagement methodology. This strategy mainly allows the participation and involvement of the researchers and families who attend the program. Some of the projects are: socio and environmental diagnostic of the areas to map the special needs of the neighborhoods; dialogic educational meetings with parents in their own places and systematic training seminars for the social agents. The results have shown that the interventions have been interfering positively in the belief systems of the participants that include the University researchers, the social agents and the families and community. The communicability of these two contexts, university and communities, offers the chance of opening discussion to search common proposals to empower either the population at risk and the professionals who feel freer to collaborate to public policies.