Particularidades do exercício profissional do/a assistente social na Unidade de Custódia Psiquiátrica de Sergipe (UCP/SE)

Abstract

The present study deals with the professional practice of social workers in the socio-legal field. The incentive for research emerged from the supervised internship experience in the Social Service sector of the Sergipe Psychiatric Custody Unit (UCP/SE). The research had the general objective of analyzing the particularities of the social worker's professional practice at UCP/SE. We take as specific objectives: to analyze the purpose set by social workers in their professional practice at UCP/SE and its possible relationship with the Social Service Ethical-Political Project and psychiatric reform; know the activities carried out by social workers at UCP/SE and the main instruments for carrying them out. The research has an exploratory nature of a qualitative nature, with bibliographical, documentary and field research procedures. Its results were organized for analysis based on thematic axes according to the study objectives. To carry out the research and data analysis, we took historical-dialectical materialism as a reference, which allows us to go beyond the appearance of the object and reach its essence, assuming a perspective of totality in the analysis. The research results made it possible to recognize the purpose of professional activity, the identification of professional activities and the main means/instruments used to carry them out. Furthermore, it was possible to verify the fragility of the conditions for the development of professional actions, whether in relation to structural aspects or even due to the difficulty of recognition by other professionals in the professional team about the skills and duties of the social worker in the institution and, also, due to the reduced condition of exercising professional autonomy by social workers when directing their actions to respond to what is institutionally requested. Among the main results of the research, we note that the professional practice of social workers in the institution has as its main purpose the guarantee of users' rights, which essentially establishes an important link with the Ethical-Political Project of Social Service and with what advocates reform psychiatric. And, despite taking place in an asylum-prison institution, whose dynamics impose limits on professional autonomy, we understand that the Social Service of this institution is going against the current, with a view to intervening in favor of guaranteeing the social rights of users and the ethical-political commitment to de-institutionalization as a horizon.