Home services for children and adolescents: feedback effects, reflections, and current challenges

Abstract The objective of the study is to investigate, through a historical and institutional perspective, the historical development and current configuration of the Institutional Care Service for Children and Adolescents at risk. It is argued that, by favoring the development of certain skills at the expense of others, previous decisions have influenced current decisions, explaining the difficulty of changing the course of policy. The analysis shows that choices made in the Vargas Era undermined the implementation of innovations established by the Código de 1979 and the Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente (ECA) (1990) up until the mid-2000s when the bureaucracy of state social assistance was strengthened. The empirical data used are found in the Censo Suas 2014 and the regulations that, from the early twentieth century, have been structured in child and adolescent social assistance policies.