Policies and Programs to Tackle Domestic Violence Against Children: Something New in the COVID-19 Pandemic?

• Autor(a) principal: Letícia Harumi Shimabukuro
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Karen Namie Sakata-So, Lucimara Fabiana Fornari, Emiko Yoshikawa Egry
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.36367/ntqr.8.2021.234-244
• topic: Maus-Tratos Infantis; Violência Doméstica; Política Pública; Pandemias; Pesquisa Qualitativa; Child Abuse; Domestic Violence; Public Policy; Pandemics; Qualitative Research

Introduction: Domestic violence against children is a prevalent phenomenon in society. In the COVID-19 pandemic, given the social distance and temporary closure of schools, the problem worsened. Objectives: To identify policies and programs for the recognition of health needs with a focus on domestic violence against children in the COVID-19 pandemic and to verify the power of qualitative and documentary studies for the analysis of the phenomenon. Methods: This is a qualitative, documentary study. The scenario was a municipality in the Southern Region of Brazil. Data collection was carried out from October 2020 to January 2021, on official websites related to the topic. Data processing is under development and will be carried out using thematic content analysis technique with the support of the webQDA software. Results: Preliminary results showed that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a reduction in reports of violence against children and adolescents, in addition to the difficulty of accessing support networks, causing underreporting of records. Thirteen documents related to policies and programs were selected, some worldwide and others emanating from different spheres of government - municipal, state and federal. All of them lack a definition of goals to be achieved in tackling domestic violence against children during the pandemic. Two empirical categories were highlighted: impact of the pandemic on the notification of cases and characterization of violence in policies and programs. Conclusions: The documentary study proves to be a powerful resource to identify the nature of programs and policies related to coping with the phenomenon under study. Although preliminary, policies and programs need to be more assertive to face violence against children, exposed daily to aggressors, without the support networks, reducing the likelihood of monitoring and reporting cases.