Social Work Social Development – 2012 – Action and Impact

Drª Denise Carmen de Andrade Neves

PUC/GO and UFG

BRASIL

Domestic violence against children and the public policies – the situation of families attended to a health unit in

Goiânia – GO Brasil

• Domestic violence is one of the most difficult kinds of violence to be detected, because it happens in the private ambience and it involves the adult’s coercion against the child or the adolescents.

• In Brazil the violence is considered a problem of public health, which demands compulsory notification.

• The public health units must qualify their service to care for victims of violence; however, there have been many hindrances to become effective.

• In this work, domestic violence is analysed considering that the absence or precariousness of the public policies regarding families in vulnerable situation favours the happening or the perpetuation of this kind of violence.

• Were considered in the analysis of domestic violence the implications of socio-historical, economic and cultural.

• Had as its starting point the understanding of the relationships between:

a) the living conditions of families, domestic violence and social rights;

b) the occurrence of structural violence as a factor influencing the occurrence of domestic violence;

c) socio-historical, economic, political and cultural rights and the occurrence of domestic violence.

• In Brazil, since the 1990, there is a Code to protect the Child and the Adolescent (Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente).

• It’s a law that guarantees children’s and adolescents’ rights, as well as sets, among other aspects, protection against all kind of violence.

• Thus, the analysis about the reality of domestic violence against children and adolescents held in this research is closely related living conditions of families and the violation and disrespect for their rights result of the social inequalities present in our reality.

• It’s understood that the conditions of life are associated with the guarantee of basic rights such as access to food, education, health, housing, leisure, work and citizenship should be defined and implemented by the State.

• Public policies are the instrument of implementation of these rights.

• It’s understood that domestic violence cuts across all social classes and consists of a multicausal phenomenon.

• However, in families whose basic needs are not met, it can be stated that this type of violence is enhanced.

• Our research was conducted in one of the most important units Health in Goiânia-GO/Brasil.

• It was conducted with fifteen families, whose children or adolescents were attended in this unit between the years 2005 and 2010.

• Of the various manifestations of domestic violence evidenced in this group were identified: 33% as negligence, 33% sexual violence, 20% psychological violence and 13% physical violence.

• By analyzing the families’ access to public policies, we could see that 73% did not have access to social facilities to their children or adolescents (e.g. nurseries or programs that hinder children’s work)

• This evaluation is reinforced by the data acquired in the results of the medical records analysed, because, in 60% of them, there was not a sequence in the treatment of children or adolescent in situation of violence.

• As for the access to outside classroom activities (sport, art, tutoring), 53% of the families didn’t have access to them.

• When they evaluated Education Policy, half of the families considered it poor or bad.

• The same opinion was given by 87% of the families about Health Policy.

• Social policy, when it reaches a public character and not plural or mixed, must seek to serve, especially the basic social needs of citizens in order to ensure that all such as law, living conditions and welfare. This public character only becomes possible when social policy "is based on the principles of social inclusion, equal rights and universal access to social goods and services"

• In this sense, the issues relating to living conditions and domestic violence against children and adolescents can not be treated in isolation but as part of structural violence that plagues the whole society because it is embedded in the Brazilian reality, unfair, unequal and violent for the majority of the population that lives and survives in a reality marked by the contradiction of economic growth on the one hand, and poverty and inequality on the other.

• Thus, empirical research confirms the questions initially formulated, among which it claims to be the absence of effective universal public policies, with actions based on comprehensiveness, a risk factor for families in situations of social vulnerability, contributing to greater exposure the occurrence of domestic violence.

• In this sense, the research identified in the everyday life of families who have experienced or experiencing domestic violence, lack of effective public policies that may have contributed to the perpetuation or the occurrence of domestic violence.

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• It is understood as necessary in this relationship of responsibility, care, because it runs the risk of blaming only the families, when one must also grasp the omission of the authorities in relation to ensuring social protection for families in situations of social vulnerability.

• It's thinking about the seriousness of childhood violated it becomes necessary to revise the social protection, since violence can cause irreparable damage to the physical and psychological development of children and adolescents.

• To ensure public social protection becomes essential participation of the different areas of knowledge, to apprehend and intervene in this issue, noting the different determinations of singular and collective, in order to rescue its historical dimension and reveal the possibilities for change that reality .