A relativa autonomia e as atribuições e competências profissionais: uma análise do trabalho do/a assistente social no Centro de Referência Especializado de Assistência Social (CREAS) no município de Campina Grande-PB

Abstract

The debate about the autonomy of the social worker, in the professional literature, is guided by the understanding of his/her relative condition. The relative professional autonomy, a constitutive trait of Social Work, expresses the class character that permeates professional work. The study of relative autonomy and the way in which it is expressed in the performance of attributions and professional competences of social workers who work in the Specialized Reference Centers for Social Assistance (CREAS) in the city of Campina Grande - PB constituted the main objective of this study. . With regard to the specific objectives, the research aimed to identify the attributions and competences carried out by the social workers of the CREAS in the city of Campina Grande - PB and problematize them in the light of the social direction of the profession, recognize the determinants that extend or retract the relative autonomy of the professions. social workers in the performance of their attributions and professional competences and apprehend how the relative autonomy is expressed in the daily work, in the delimitation and performance of their attributions and competences. With regard to methodology, we emphasize that the dialectical critical method and its categories of analysis – such as contradiction, movement and totality – were the path of thought through which we sought to approach and ideally reproduce our object of study. From a procedural point of view, an in-depth study of the state of the art was carried out, through the use of books, magazines, theses and dissertations that deal with the subject at hand. Among the studies in the field of professional work and the relative autonomy of the social worker, we turn, above all, to those carried out by IAMAMOTO (2010), IAMAMOTO (2013), IAMAMOTO (2015), RAICHELIS (2018), GUERRA (2016), SIMOES (2012). Still with regard to procedures and sources of information, historical and contemporary bibliographical analysis was added, empirical research was carried out, which aimed to obtain data from social workers who work at the Specialized Reference Center for Social Assistance (CREAS), a service linked to the Department of Social Assistance of the municipality of Campina Grande - PB (SEMAS). The collection was made through semi-structured interviews, carried out with the consent of the Social Assistance Secretariat of Campina Grande - PB and approval of the Research Ethics Committee of UEPB. The study identified, among other aspects, that the relative autonomy has been expressed in different ways in the work process of social workers: in the possibility of delimitation and execution of attributions and competences; in the choice of instruments and techniques; in the referrals made; in the construction of documents where technical opinions are exposed. However, it was also possible to observe that this relative autonomy is stressed in professional work by the condition of salaried workers, precarious working conditions and the current configuration of social assistance policy in contemporary times. These determinants affect the relative professional autonomy and present tensions to the materialization of the Ethical-Political Project of Social Work, which in times of capitalist crisis and the resurgence of barbarism, must be the object of incessant defense.