Between philanthropy and social law: the social representations of caregivers work in a shelter home

Abstract

The work done by caregivers in shelters for children and youths in personal and social risk is the subject of this project, which aims to investigate the social representations of these workers about their work in the field of Social Work. In Brazil, the new legal devices created in recent decades have caused substantial changes in the way of addressing the issue of children and young people in social situations of vulnerability and this affects the work of those dedicated, daily, to the care of this population that theoretically left to be mere philanthropic social action for social right. Think the work in contemporary capitalist society implies reflecting on certain contradictions that underpin the existing production system to the detriment of the subjectivity of working. To investigate the social representations of the field of Social Services worker about their work we use the notion of the care work and northern Theory of Social Representations. The empirical field of research is the Shelter Home in Bariri, São Paulo, characterized as a social character entity with own legal personality and nonprofit, which attends children and youth among 0-18 years who are under protective measures judicially determined. The methodology strategies chosen to establish and permeate the dialogue with the workers of Shelter Home are: document analysis, direct observation and semi-structured interviews. The analysis will be performed from the perspective of qualitative epistemology.