Caminhos desconexos: o papel da política de assistência social de Maceió na vida das crianças que se desenvolvem em situação de rua

Abstract

The reality of children who live on the streets or rather survive there is radically opposed to the citizenship model proposed by Brazilian legislation. Even though, there are legal procedures that aim to reverse this problem, the public policies remain ineffective and inefficient, without guarantee of effective exercise of these children rights. The Social welfare policy, particularly, remains with strong charity and repressive traces thus hampering the construction of citizen perspectives for children who live and grow up homeless. In Maceió, this situation is even more severe due to the large number of children who use the streets for survival and also for the high murder rates of these children. The process that resulted in the decommission of the Department of Social Welfare of Maceió (SEMAS), occurred in 2007, reflects the ineffectiveness of the State as well as reveals the difficulties experienced by children who live on the street. In this context, we propose the understanding of the Social welfare policy in Maceió facing children who live on the streets since we believe that this knowledge can contribute to the construction of new paths to overcome this reality. The recognition of these children as people who deserve their civil rights and also the acknowledgement that they are people with social and subjective skills is essential in the process of creating policies committed to human dignity and respect of these children. In order to question the resulting effects of these social policies insufficiency, our research aims to grasp the role that the Social welfare policy represents in these children lives. We adopted a qualitative research methodology with participant observation, social representation, document analysis and interviews with homeless children and the professionals / managers of the Citizenship Guardian Project (SEMAS project that works directly with this population). Therefore, it was possible to understand to which extent the Social Welfare Policy meets the needs of homeless children. Although the ongoing policy can be accepted as an opportunity for these children survival in midst of all adversities experienced by them on the streets, it does not produce significant changes in their lives, alter their precarious habitus or allow these children’s access to various social resources available for effective exercise of citizenship. The political alliances, the manipulation related to the participation of these homeless children in the program and the lack of autonomy of the professional / management team which execute the policy are factors that make it hard to effectively change the directions of the Social welfare policy towards the rights of these children.