Abstract

ALVES, Roberta C. P..  and  VERISSIMO, Maria De La Ó. R.. Day-care center caregivers and their conflict between giving care and teaching. Rev. bras. crescimento desenvolv. hum. [online]. 2007, vol.17, n.1, pp. 13-25. ISSN 0104-1282.

To promote children’s health is to guarantee quality in the care given, in order to provide their integral development. The day-care center is a place where children live great part of their days, justifying the attempt to understand how this care is offered to them. The general objective of the present study was to characterize the aspects related to the implementation of health care in a day-care center, and the specific objective was to identify the caregivers’ perceptions and the institutional proposal concerning the child health care. Interviews were carried out with four teachers and the pedagogical coordinator of a public municipal day-care center in the city of São Paulo, and institutional documents were analyzed. The caregivers’ discourse revealed that the integration of education and care seems to be a characteristic of the work in the day-care center, but many factors made this integration difficult, such as the personnel’s deficient formation in relation to care, particularly that in the health area, and the overload of activities. In view of these difficulties, questions concerning the possibility to effectively accomplish this integration arose. Education still appears as the main focus of the teachers’ work, and care seems to be something inevitable since the child is very dependent. Therefore, care actions remain restricted to the children’s body and are emphasized only when they are considered as activities to be taught, aiming at the child’s independence. The institutional proposal identified in documents presents gaps concerning the effective inclusion of care as an independent category that is inherentin the caregivers’ professional function. In conclusion, the study points to the need to continue improving the construction of appropriate proposals to this level of childhood assistance, with the support of other knowledge areas that perform childcare. Keywords: Child health. Day-care centers. Child education. Primary health care. Pediatric nursing.

Keywords : Saúde infantil; Creches; Educação infantil; Cuidados primários de saúde; Enfermagem pediátrica.

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