Disciplinar, proteger, judicializar: uma análise das práticas do assistente social na política pública de saúde

Abstract

This thesis aims, from the problematization of the protection and judicialization of the bodies, desires, lives and deaths of children and adolescents with cancer and their families, to think about the effects of the logic of law, discipline, and the assertion of models considered unquestionable in the area of health in the context of public policies. Using as a reference my experience as a social worker in a hospital - narrated in this thesis - I analyze the centrality of the norms instituted in the relationship with the patients and the punishments for not abiding by them. By means of such practices the disease ceases to belong to the person who experiences it, becoming an object of the actions of professionals, based on the discourse of justice, protection and law. It is a logic according to which professionals define in which ways the illness should be cared for, lived, felt and understood by the people in treatment, to the detriment of respect for their desires, needs and affections. Such professional practices, while being asserted as unquestionable truths that must be imposed upon poor families, are among the many possibilities of thinking about what is health and life. However, state intervention through traditional medicine and the judicialization of life normalizes, standardizes and pathologizes children, adolescents and families that do not adhere to or do not accept the established health model. In this way, legal logic is being produced as necessary and public policies are increasingly determining which is the correct way to get sick, to get pregnant, to get older, to be born, to die, and so on. Thus, this thesis defends other possibilities of action for the social worker in the public health policy, which are defined neither by the protection nor by the judicialization instituted, but open to the possibility of bringing other options in life and profession, that is, to invent new relationships, to create new ways of acting and to relate to users of public health policy