Abstract

SANTANA, Juliana Prates  and  AVANZO, Janaina Rocha. Childhood and rights: the use of participation methodology in the context of institutional care. Rev. Subj. [online]. 2014, vol.14, n.2, pp. 306-318. ISSN 2359-0769.

The theme of children's rights has gained increasing in the last decades, especially after the adoption of the Statute of the Child and Adolescent (ECA) in Brazil. In this statute, children are conceived as subjects of rights and not as "minors", as it existed earlier in the Brazilian legislation. When it comes to children´s rights, the most recently debated is the right of participation and that includes appreciation and defense of children´s participation in researches with children. Thus, the objective of this research is to analyze the influence of care institutions' situation on how children perceive and position themselves as subjects of rights. In this investigation 14 children with 8-12 years in situation of foster care institution participated. The data were collected through participation methodologies, aiming to give space to the participants to tell about what they know and perceive as children's rights and which ones are guaranteed or violated for them. The results showed that these children possess great knowledge about situations of rights´violations, which can illustrate the lack of assurance of these rights in their everyday lives. However, they do not have general knowledge about their rights or the people or institutions they could look for to stop their rights from being violated. In conclusion, the foster care context contributes in a significant manner to constituting children´s conception of their rights, and it becomes necessary to further the dissemination and application of the rights described in ECA in many different contexts, including the foster care institutions. Besides, from this research, it was possible to verify the adequacy of participation methodologies as a privileged way of accessing children and their perception of important aspects of their lives.

Keywords : care institutions; rights; participation methodologies; children; participation.

        · abstract in Portuguese | Spanish | French     · text in Portuguese     · Portuguese ( pdf )