Olhando uma realidade, olhando o outro : representações sociais da pobreza e do usuário entre os profissionais da assistência social

Abstract

This study examines the social representations of poverty and of the poor users of social care services existing among professionals that implement the Social Care Policy in the City of Vitória, ES (Brazil). Its main purpose is to identify and analyze these representations. Bibliographical research, documental research, non-participant observation, semi-structured interviews with professionals of various categories that implement such policy and content analysis approach were carried out as methodological procedures to support this study. Some of the main lines of the Social Representation Theory were essential in this investigation. Based on the assumption that the activities performed by social policy professionals, whether in its planning or in its accomplishment, are mostly founded on choices based on the values explicitly or implicitly adopted by them, we concluded the following: the professional interviewed see the Social Care Reference Centers as important spaces for users participation, but, on the other hand, they consider that there are restrictions to such participation; the professionals acknowledge social care as a right, but some of them still refer to it as if it were a favor done; they claim the capitalist system and history itself are responsible for poverty, but in different ways they blame the poor themselves for their situation; because their representations of the users are based on the lack paradigm, they tend to see the users as ―non-subjects‖; for this reason and for not representing Social Care Policy users by taking into account their ―concrete positiveness‖, such professionals can, even though unintentionally, contribute to hindering users protagonism and their effective participation in Social Care Policy and in the fight for rights.