Abstract
Regulatory documents determine that Special Social Protection (PSE) services of the Unified Social Assistance System (SUAS) must offer psychosocial support to its users. However, they do not specify which support, what type of activities it includes, why it mainly characterizes PSE services or what differentiates it from other activities developed by teams in these services. Given this, in this article, we seek to answer the following questions: how do professionals working in the technical teams or in the management of special social protection services in the municipality of São Paulo understand the notion of “psychosocial support”? And how is this notion converted into concrete intervention practices? To answer them, we conducted a bibliographic and documentary research, as well as 10 semi-structured interviews with professionals from PSE services. The interviews and documents analyzed indicate the polysemy of the expression psychosocial support. At times, it refers to certain practices or actions that are part of the daily routine of SUAS services; at other times, it refers to an aspect or vision that guides the work. They also indicate that this form of support is characterized, among other things, by its interdisciplinary nature, by the importance given to context and territory and by not being equivalent to the traditional psychotherapeutic clinic.
Keywords:
Psychology; Social assistance; Public policies; Psychosocial care; Special social protection