Listening to young people and promoting places for them to participate in key decisions on

their lives have long been central to CIESPI’s work. A new publication takes these concerns

into the area of institutional care for adolescents. “Spaces for listening and participation in the

context of institutional care for adolescents” has just been published by CIESPI and

examines the issue by looking at the events involved in the Unit for Social Reinsertion (URS)

in Bangu in the State of Rio de Janeiro reopening in Campo Grande in the same state. A

URS is an institutional facility for protection of young people who have to be temporarily

separated from their families due to some kind of violation of their rights. While child and

youth participation is provided for in several Brazilian statutes, the effort first in URS Bangu

and later in the replacement URS Paulo Freire, depended on the institution as a whole being

committed to the process.

The regular conversations between the young people and the staff involved such topics as

the naming of the new institution, the food service, drug use, settling down in the new facility

and dealing there with community opposition. The conversations also covered the youths’

sometimes fraught relationships with their families of origin and ways to improve those

relationships. The authors explain:

When the dynamics of institutional life are -co-constructed between residents and staff, that

process can minimize the rigid marks of family and social history making it possible for the

young persons to get in touch with their feelings and give different meaning to their stories.

But for this to happen, it is necessary to understand the young people’s subjective view of

their experiences in the past, respecting them as communicating beings who establish

relationships with their families of origin and the community on their return and with the

people whom they live within the institutional setting.

The project was conducted with a grant from FAPERJ, the State of Rio’s research arm, and

was written by Carla Cerqueira and Irene Rizzini.