Redes do cuidado : etnografia de aparatos de gestão intersetorial para usuários de drogas

Abstract

This research presents an ethnography of care’s network. I describe the mode of operation of an intersectoral management for drug users, as from a fieldwork in public health equipment in São Bernardo do Campo (SP). The construction of networks for reception and support care (acolhimento e cuidado), appointment (encaminhamento) and treatment for this targeted public is the empirical question that guides this research. The ambiguous figure of drug user (both patient and defaulter) resonates in the public policies for this population. For this reason, the networks both care as well as enclose these subjects at the same time. The ethnography of network in the health sector explores the challenges and dilemmas that these intersectoral management apparatus evoke. I present the issues that revolve around the network’s organizational model that is formulated by standardization of policies and the universalization of principles, but in practical terms they are invented according to the occasions. I also raised the dilemmas of how workers throw themselves on the challenge of tying partnerships, doing maintenance, seeing the size of the network, tracking the movement of people, information and documents, and planning their growth in the territories. Such developments matches the dilemmas of an assistance project that aims to take care of people in freedom, accomplishing the democratic and humanistic precepts, but intends to monitor the movements and pursue many traces.