Paper
Friday, 21 July 2006
This presentation is part of : Initiatives for Child and Adolescent Health Issues
Public Policy for Adolescents in a Municipality
Emiko Yoshikawa Egry, RN, MNSc, PhD, Collective Health Nursing Department, São Paulo University School of Nursing, São Paulo, Brazil and Lara de Paula Eduardo, OTBa, Collective Health Nursing Department, São Paulo University School of Nursing, São Paulo, Brazil.
Learning Objective #1: verify how the Child and Adolescent Statute is implementing in the municipality of São Carlos, São Paulo State, Brazil.
Learning Objective #2: know some characteristics of the institutions of adolescent care and how they are facing the challenges of Statute.
In Brazil, since the Child and Adolescent Statute (ECA) was established, in 1990, the state has been allowed to amplify public policies towards such social group. We assumed Oliveira’s point of view that adolescence is a social phenomenon. She considers that the characteristics of this developmental stage are more similar between social pairs than between chronological pairs. We had previously conducted a review of studies on adolescence in which we verified that most authors understand adolescence to be a universal issue that is associated to common characteristics of a particular age group. There are many institutions aiming to assist adolescents in the city of São Carlos, São Paulo State. The objective of this study was to comprehend how they are organized, what are their goals, how they perceive the adolescents, and how they assume that their assistance meets the premises of citizenship and rights of the adolescents to a healthy life which enables their full development. The methodology is descriptive and the data was collected by analyzing documents and conducting interviews with the directors of the institutions. Fourty-four  institutions were surveyed, and they were shown to be very different from each other in terms of objectives, size and age of the target public, religious orientation, type and amount of workers, etc. While most institutions focus on leisure activities and professional education, some of them only assist adolescents who have committed any kind of illegal action, whether by providing housing or administrating socio-educative programs. Although there are many different organs assisting adolescents, it seems that their actions are not integrated towards the implementation of the Child and Adolescent Statute.

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