| Hello, *|NOME|* Over the last decade, efforts to build the architecture of the Unified Social Assistance System (SUAS) have resulted in a capillary presence of Social Assistance throughout the country. Legally, SUAS fulfills two essential roles: to provide immediate poverty alleviation and to mitigate the impact of unevenly distributed risks on society, and to stimulate productive inclusion. To guide the reflection on the theme, the IMDS organized, on May 30, the webinar "Social Assistance: Building Pathways to End the Poverty Trap", as part of the gLOCAL Evaluation Week. gLOCAL is a global event promoted by the Global Evalutation Initiative (GEI), represented in Brazil by FGV EESP Clear. The event was attended by the CEO and project coordinator of IMDS, Paulo Tafner and Giovanna Ribeiro, the CEO and co-founder of Oppen Social, Andrezza Rosalém and the professors of Insper, Ricardo Paes de Barros and Laura Machado. The webinar began with the presentation by Giovanna Ribeiro of the results of IMDS studies on the first generations of the Bolsa Família Program. Focusing on the approximately 5.2 million people aged 7 to 16 who received the social assistance benefit in 2005, administrative records from the 2019 Single Registry and the Annual Social Information Report (RAIS) between the years 2015 and 2019 were used in order to characterize the dynamics of poverty and mobility. The exit rate of the Single Registry in 2019, which occurred for 64.1% of the members of the first generations, informs about the frequency of possible emancipation from poverty. The presence in the RAIS, in turn, is indicative of possible social ascension and occurs for 44.7% of the members of the first generations. These contributions pointed to an important role of Social Assistance, through one of its main benefits, to build opportunities for social mobility in the life cycle. They opened space for the following presentations, which addressed positive and normative aspects of the functioning of SUAS. Andrezza Rosalém presented the main normative milestones in historical perspective, in an effort to describe how the national policy of decentralized Social Assistance and great capillarity was structured. In Andrezza's presentation, special attention was given to the main equipment of Basic Social Protection, the Reference Centers for Social Assistance (Cras), and the main service, the Comprehensive Family Care Program (Paif). One of the possible readings of Andrezza's presentation is that SUAS has succeeded in establishing clear normative and objective frameworks. Following this, Ricardo Paes de Barros presented a proposal to re-signify Cras and Paif in terms of focusing their services on those who need it most and building a truly comprehensive service. The proposal is based, firstly, on knowing, in a systematic and routinely updated way, who are the poorest and what are their specific vulnerabilities, from multidimensional indicators built based on the Single Registry. In recognition of the valuable knowledge of the public agents who build Social Assistance at the cutting edge, it was proposed that there should also be some degree of discretion in the focus, beyond the use of these quantitative indicators. Comprehensive care for families mapped by this process would culminate, in the end, in a family development plan appropriate to local opportunities for productive inclusion. Laura Machado continued Ricardo's presentation, pointing out the importance of the existence of more uniform methods of identification and prioritization of the most vulnerable, of guaranteeing their access to public policies, and of instrumentalizing assistants in integral care through clear protocols, capable, in particular, of building the paths of intersectionality with areas such as health and education. The exposition also gave concrete substance to the proposals discussed in the webinar, visiting successful examples, such as Nossa Gente Paraná. A possible reading of the content of the webinar is that there seems to be a high degree of agreement on the potential of Basic Social Protection as an instrument to overcome – beyond the relief of – poverty, with a focus on productive inclusion. Essential implementation difficulties present themselves to anyone who contemplates this possibility realistically. How to establish a harmonious balance between the existence of uniform methods of operation of the Cras and the Paif and the ability for them to contemplate local specificities? What is the best way to ensure that Social Assistance agents are aware of the opportunities for productive inclusion in communities? How to build a social agreement that gives basis to the prioritization of the inclusion of the most vulnerable? IMDS is developing a broad research project aimed at in-depth analysis of the Unified Social Assistance System (SUAS), including its normative architecture, the demand and supply of social assistance services and programs, their current and future costs. This project has been structured by the IMDS technical team, in partnership with Andrezza Rosalém, Ricardo Paes de Barros, Laura Machado and Wanda Engel. We invite readers to follow the next steps of the project, which will be announced on our portal in the coming months.
Happy reading and until the next "IMDS Letter"! Paulo Tafner CEO |
