Secretariat for Social Assistance (SNAS) of the Ministry of Social Development and Assistance, Family and Fight against Hunger – MDS (which during 2019-2022 was designated Ministry of Citizenship – MC), by means of an inter-federative SUAS management structure. Funding is co-participatory across the three levels of government: municipal, state and federal.

States and, above all, Municipalities, through CRAS, or through partnerships with civil society organizations duly registered with the Social Assistance Council. Multidisciplinary teams often involve social workers, psychologists, and other professionals of varying backgrounds and educational levels.

The Service was instituted and regulated in 2019, as per the Brazilian Typification of Social Assistance Services, published on November 11, 2009, and reissued in 2014^1,2.

Currently in operation.

Social assistance support through home visits.

N/A

Users of the service are people with disabilities (without age restriction) or the elderly (aged 60 years or older) who are experiencing situations of fragility in family bonds or social participation and who are without access to citizenship rights, with compromised autonomy, or with an unprotected family environment.

DPDI's priority audience is families with:

1. Persons benefiting from the Continuous Cash Benefit (BPC, acronym in Portuguese); 

2. Members of beneficiary families of income transfer programs; and

3. Individuals with a profile eligible for the programs listed above, but who may not yet be beneficiaries.

There is no specific goal linked to service coverage and each territory defines its goals, according to the size and available resources.

The main access route to DPDI is through referral through CRAS or any other entity of SUAS. DPDI is oriented towards reaching people who are eligible for programs such as PBF and BPC - although the social assistance teams are free to prioritize the people who will benefit by weighing up other variables raised by their more specific judgment. The inclusion of people benefited in DPDI can occur either by spontaneous demand (e.g., demands presented by individuals to CRAS or associated entities) or through active search (e.g., sample home visits in preidentified areas with high prevalence of social vulnerabilities). Other public policies can also refer the population to DPDI.

In addition to the focus criteria listed above, DPDI is exclusive for elderly and disabled people, which are criteria determined through the self-declaration made at the time of registration in the Single Registry, and instrumentally validated through family visits

There is a systemic effort to register potential and existing beneficiaries of DPDI in the Single Registry (although Single Registry entry is not an obligatory requirement to access the service). As the Single Registry is only intended for the population with a Total Family Income of up to three minimum wages (which in 2024 was equivalent to R$ 4,236.00, with the minimum wage currently being R$ 1,412.00), this ends up being, in practice, an income cut that also affects the targeting of DPDI. 

The Single Registry helps social assistance teams to identify a priority coverage group, whose characteristics give them eligibility to PBF and BPC. However, eligibility for DPDI is not restricted to people eligible for PBF and BPC, and social assistance teams are free to include other beneficiaries as appropriate. 

Rather than a measure to access DPDI, the registration of potential beneficiaries in the Single Registry is done to enable referral to other policies to which they are eligible. 

The information declared to the Single Registry is self-declaratory. The Single Registry makes annual cross-checks with other administrative records to validate the information provided. Cases of inconsistency pointed out by these checks, however, do not lead to interruptions in access to nationally typified SUAS services (although they may lead to such impediments for other programs that use the Single Registry and whose eligibility is defined by more parametric criteria of income and family composition, such as PBF and BPC). In this context, the link with DPDI generates an opportunity to carry out registration updates of beneficiaries whose declared information may be questioned by cross-checks with other databases. 

According to the CRAS SUAS Census, in August 2021 the initiative served a total of 77,319 individuals (53,009 carried out directly via CRAS, and another 24,310 carried out by the accredited network). More than 60% of these services are aimed at elderly beneficiaries. The 2022 CRAS Monthly Service Record System (RMA) does not present a specific quantity of this service.

As a reference, it is worth noting that the Bolsa Família Program has a coverage of approximately 20 million families (or 53 million people benefited)^{3, 4}.

There is no exhaustive list of all the activities that can be performed as part of DPDI, and there is enough freedom for each CRAS and its accredited networks that act according to their specific capacities and the peculiarity of the situations of vulnerability found in each territory. 

There is, however, a structured instrument (the User Development Plan - PDU) that guides the social assistance teams to work with the people benefited and to identify their greatest challenges, prioritize their goals, and support these people in obtaining access to other services and solving other social assistance challenges related to the goals consensually established in the PDU. 

According to the SUAS Census of August 2021, 47.6% of the consultations occur monthly, 13.6% occur biweekly, 7.5% occur weekly, and another 31.3% occur with another periodicity (which encompasses both longer periods and visits with non-regular periodicity, determined according to a more specific situation).

Some types of activities used by the SUAS Census to monitor CRAS performance include[i]:

• Support at the home of the beneficiaries (basically referring to a first service in which the social assistance team will support the beneficiary to report the challenges they encounter, to generate a record that can be an input for strategies to face these difficulties).

• Preparation of the User Development Plan.

• Home visit for guidance and family support.

• Periodic interaction and groups discussions with the family through home visits.

• Periodic territorial meetings with multi-family groups.

• Mobilization actions for citizenship in the territory.

• Dissemination and encouragement of the participation of beneficiaries and their families in social accountability councils.

Periodic meetings and encounters with the local network to discuss cases/situations of service beneficiaries.

Services implemented mainly at the home of the beneficiaries, but there may be collective activities carried out in CRAS or other public spaces.

SUAS funding is shared by the three levels of government (Federal Government, states and municipalities). Resources are allocated in blocks and minimums, which have some flexibility to finance the various SUAS initiatives (see Policy Brief on SUAS financing). Although we did not find information on the total budget coming from each level of government, the table below illustrates the budget executions of the Federal Government for discretionary actions of the Secretariat of Social Assistance/ Social Assistance Fund (SNAS/FNAS, acronyms in Portuguese) between 2002 and 2022 (in actual amounts corrected to December 31, 2022). These values encompass the entire universe of services, programs, costing of management activities and investment of SUAS, so they do not refer only to DPDI costs.⁶

Federal budget executions with discretionary actions of SNAS/ FNAS between 2002 and 2022 (in real values adjusted for December 31, 2022)

Although we did not find consolidated values on the resources specifically directed to DPDI financing, it is assumed that the Fixed Basic Minimum Funding Variable III - Task Force (which is part of the Basic Social Protection Block) is the most directed to DPDI financing. In 2022, the Federal Government transferred a total of R$ 23,827,360.55 to this Minimum[i] (an amount corresponding to 2% of the total expenses of the Federal Government specifically directed to the 12 social assistance services nationally typified by SUAS that year).

A quasi-experimental academic study points out that the implementation of SUAS generated expansion and improvement in the provision of services, as well as improvement of administrative capacity at the municipal level, even when controlling specific political factors

Children with disabilities are also eligible for the initiative and, according to the August 2021 SUAS Census, account for about 18% of beneficiaries with disabilities⁹.

Apart from the general orientation of SUAS to empower girls and women through its various services (including the DPDI), there are no specific aspects aimed at this public, nor does RMA provide data on the coverage or classification of activities that would allow us to infer a gender difference in their coverage or thematic orientation.

However, it is worth remembering that in Brazil, in most cases, women are imposed the role of family caregivers of the sick, the elderly, children and PwD.

Thus, the expectation is that as an externality of the service there is a potential to protect and reduce the work overload for women caregivers, allowing them to develop self-care and develop personal life projects.

Guidelines and references for other networks such as education, health and Specialized Social Protection, which occur in a structured way based on PDU. 

The specific adaptations of DPDI varied greatly in each context, given the flexibility of state and municipal teams to adapt according to the specific needs of each context. However, there was a set of structured actions with an effect on SUAS in general, such as the following:

• Although SUAS was not directly involved in the Emergency Aid benefit, several municipal teams developed voluntary joint efforts to support families to apply for the benefit. 

• The Federal Government maintained the IGD-Aid payments even with the temporary suspension of SUAS responsibilities in support of the program (and the PBF program itself) in 2020 and much of 2021.

• The Federal Government generated instructional material with service protocols in light of the challenge of avoiding agglomeration.

• Through Ordinance MC No. 369, of April 29, 2020, the Federal Government distributed R$ 2.4 billion to SUAS as extraordinary credit distributed as follows among the municipalities with the highest prevalence of elderly, PwD, migrants and homeless people:
  • R$ 9.1 million was transferred to the interiorization of Venezuelan migrants and refugees;

  • R$ 158.1 million were allocated to the purchase of PPE for SUAS professionals working on the front line, serving, for example, sheltered elderly, homeless people and victims of rights violations;

  • R$ 185.6 million were transferred to the purchase of food for the elderly and people with disabilities served by the SUAS network;

  • R$ 577.7 million for the co-financing of social assistance actions, according to the needs of each location considering the pandemic.

• Through Ordinances MC No. 378, of May 7, 2020, and MC No. 468, of August 13, 2020, R$ 1.5 billion were transferred to: (a) the reorganization of activities in SUAS units; (b) the purchase of other items necessary to deal with the emergency; or (c) the expansion of social assistance offers during the pandemic. Of these:
  • R$1 billion was specifically intended to reinforce basic social protection activities;

  • R$ 437.2 million were specifically intended to reinforce Specialized Social Protection activities^{10, 11, 12}.

In addition to the transfer of funds, several technical guidelines were released by the MDS.