National 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 between the three levels of government: municipal, state and federal.

States and, above all, Municipalities, through CREAS and accredited Day Centers.

Estados e, sobretudo, Municípios, por meio de CREAS e Centros Dia credenciados.

The Service was instituted and regulated from 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 a service to Strengthen Community and Family Bonds.

N/A

PwD and elderly people in situations of dependency who have their situation aggravated by rights violation.

Cases can be identified through referral made by the Rights Guarantee System (SGD, acronym in Portuguese)[i], or through the assessment and active search of social assistance teams, and also through referral from other facilities and services of SUAS. 

There is a systemic effort to register the potential public and person benefited by PCDIF in the Single Registry (although this is not a requirement to gain access to the service). 

Rather than a measure to request and access PCDIF, the registration of the potential public in the Single Registry is done to enable the referral of these people to other policies to which they are eligible. 

The information declared to the Single Registry is fundamentally self-declaratory. The Single Registry makes annual cross-checks with other administrative records to validate its information. 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 tool and whose eligibility is defined by more parametric criteria of income and family composition, such as the Bolsa Familia Program - PBF and the Continuous Cash Benefit - BPC). Yet, the link with PCDIF generates an opportunity to update the registration of its beneficiaries whose declared information may be questioned by cross-checks with other databases.

•    The SUAS CREAS Census indicates that in August 2021 there were a total of 23,403 people served by this service (which is an indication of coverage through services offered at home).³
•    The Day Center SUAS Census indicates that in August 2021 another 6,192 people were served through activities that take place in Day Centers. 

As a result, a total coverage of 29,595 people is estimated between both units (CREAS and Day Centers).

There is flexibility for social assistance teams to propose activities that reflect local priorities and capacities. In any case, the CREAS Monthly Service Record System (RMA, acronym in Portuguese) reflects some guiding values that should inform the offer of activities when monitoring them through their classification according to the categories listed below:

• Sheltering and initial listening;

• Social study;

• Carrying out daily self-care activities;

• Guidance on access to BPC;

• Guidance on access to other benefits;

• Guidance and support for obtaining personal documentation;

• Guidance for registration in the Single Registry;

• Preparation of Individual and/or Family Monitoring Plan;

• Workshops and collective activities of community living and socialization;

• Referral to the network of social assistance services;

• Referral to health network services;

• Referral to education policy;

• Referral to services/Units of other public policies;

• Referral to rights defense bodies (Public Defender's Office, Public Prosecutor's Office, Guardianship Council, Rights Councils, etc.);

• Monitoring beneficiaries referred to the network;

• Record of information in medical records;

• Preparation of reports on cases under follow-up;

• Home visits;

• Activities with the beneficiary r's family;

• Mobilize beneficiaries to access the service;

• Support and guidance to family caregivers;

• Guidance on assistive technologies;

• Guidance and support in self-care;

• Lectures and workshops involving the community;

• Provision of material goods.

  
   

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). The table below illustrates the budget executions (co-financing) of the Federal Government for discretionary actions of the National Secretariat for Social Assistance/ Social Assistance Fund (SNAS/FNAS) between 2002 and 2022 (in real values 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 the costs of the PCDIF.

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

Although we did not find consolidated values on the resources specifically directed to PCDIF financing, it is assumed that the Day Center Medium Complexity Fixed Minimum and the Medium Complexity Transition Minimum (which are part of the Specialized Social Protection Block of Medium Complexity) are the most directed to financing the PCDIF. In 2022, the Federal Government transferred a total of R$ 37,442,292.76 to these Minimums[i] (an amount corresponding to 3% of the total expenses of the Federal Government specifically directed to the 12 social assistance services nationally typified by SUAS this 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 controlling for more specific political factors[i]. 

However, we did not identify robust studies on the impacts of PCDIF in a more specific way.

PCDIF covers children with disabilities and other serious health conditions (such as microcephaly due to the Zika epidemic), and in some cases there are Day Centers specifically equipped and trained for these services.

Apart from the general orientation of SUAS to empower girls and women through its various services, including PCDIF, there are no specific aspects aimed at this public. Additionally, RMA does not 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 basic social protection, of medium and high complexity, in addition to interactions with the SGD (which refers many people to PCDIF).

The specific adaptations of PCDIF 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 more structuring actions with an effect on SUAS in general, such as:

• Several municipal teams developed voluntary joint efforts to support the application for Emergency Aid (AE, acronym in Portuguese), although SUAS was not directly involved in AE.

• 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 considering 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 violation;

  • R$ 185.6 million were transferred to the purchase of food from the elderly and people with disabilities served in 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 also 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 actions;

  • R$ 437.2 million were specifically intended to reinforce Specialized Social Protection actions.

In addition to the transfer of funds, several technical guidance notes on work in the context of the pandemic were released by the MDS.

1. GoB, Min. Desenvolvimento Social. 2009. Tipificação Nacional de Serviços Socioassistenciais - Texto da RESOLUÇÃO No. 109, DE 11 DE NOVEMBRO DE  2009. https://www.prattein.com.br/home/images/stories/PDFs/Tipificacao_AS.pdf

2. GoB, Min. Desenvolvimento Social. 2014. PERGUNTAS E RESPOSTAS: o Redesenho do Programa de Erradicação do Trabalho Infantil 2a Versão. https://www.mds.gov.br/webarquivos/publicacao/assistencia_social/cartilhas/cartilha_perguntas_respostas_redesenho_peti_2014.pdf.

3. GoB, Min. Cidadania. 2022. Censo SUAS e RMA – Bases e Resultados > Censo SUAS 2021 - CREAS. https://aplicacoes.mds.gov.br/snas/vigilancia/index2.php.