Abstract

CAVALCANTE, Lília Iêda Chaves; MAGALHAES, Celina Maria Colino  and  PONTES, Fernando Augusto Ramos. Early and prolonged children’s institucionalization: discussing decisive aspects for the development. Aletheia [online]. 2007, n.25, pp. 20-34. ISSN 1413-0394.

This article discusses aspects of the general conditions in which 287 children were directed, welcomed and taken care in an infantile shelter in Belém, in a period between the years 2004 and 2005. The data were collected through consultation to documental sources and semi-structured interview with technicians from the shelter. The results show that 34,84% of the children that participated in the research were directed to the shelter before completing 1 year of age. Besides, it was verified that 9,4% of the children really lived in the shelter as if it was their home for a period of time that varied from 1 to 6 years. And approximately 40,41% were directed to the shelter because of a conjunction of factors related to the conditions of material and emotional privation to which they had been submitted, usually from the birth. The set of obtained results demonstrates that the children’s precocious and lingering institucionalization is presented as a practice still frequent nowadays, although the knowledge about the general conditions in which the reception for the institution happens, it can be a tool that makes possible the professionals, authorities and caretakers, to identify, to prevent and to repair the effects of that experience for the child’s development.

Keywords : Institutionalized child; Shelter institution; Child care; Child development.

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