This article concerns relations between care, emancipation and Social Work. Its objective is to critically reflect on a theme that has been obscured in the professional discussion. It analyzes the concept of care, as help, the family work of women and individual action, to locate them in the context of power relations and the lack of care and abandonment, which is specific to capitalist society. Care is considered from a democratic theoretical and historic perspective, which requires the construction of ethical values and the humanization of professional attention that is articulated to the existence of institutional support. The paper focuses on the recognition of the other as an individual and collective subject of rights, in the effectuation of his autonomy, democracy and citizenship in the context of social history, and as a subject, combines attention to his needs and expressions to social inclusion with ethical values and explicit processes of professional action.
Care; Social Work; Emancipation; Power relations