Abstract

PECANHA, Dóris Lieth. Literary workshops for children under psychosocial risk. Bol. - Acad. Paul. Psicol. [online]. 2007, vol.27, n.1, pp. 83-94. ISSN 1415-711X.

This work analyses the effect of using fairy tales in literary workshops, within a psychological evaluation-intervention with children under psychosocial risk. A group of street children (N=12) who were cared by the “Casa da Criança” (Child’s House) facility in the city of São Carlos, São Paulo, was the object of this study. The assumption of this work is that the fairy tales would encourage the social-affective development of the participants, which would be empirically reflected in the decrease of the children’s stress and increase empathy among the children. Being in contact with the fairy tales during the workshops, made it possible to work with the psychic experiences of each child within a group, supporting their emotional development. A quality-quantitative methodology was implemented through the registry and analysis of the children’s verbalizations during the literary workshops and of the score of the results obtained with the psychological tests. The infantile stress scale was utilized, the Empathy Scale and the Fables Test. These instruments were applied in two stages, before (pre-test) and after (past-test) the performance of the literary workshops.The results were evaluated in a qualitative form (analysis of contents) and quantitative (descriptive statistic), and the results derived from this last form have been given priority in this study. The analysis of the data indicated a decrease in the total scores of stress in 85% of the children, after the intervention. Neither of them presented vulnerability for developing of somatizations in the pre or past-tests.This result was confirmed by the Fables Test, where the children tended to direct their aggressiveness outwards. In the past- test an increase on the empathy scores was verified within the group studied. 81.8% of the participants showed in the past-test of Empathy a result higher than 50% of the possible points in the scale to determine an empathic attitude. The final results suggest the efficiency in the performed intervention, contributing to scientifically base the development of literary workshops with street children.

Keywords : Street children; Fairy tales; Stress; Empathy; Fables Test.

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