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 the 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 the Specialized Reference Centres for Social Assistance (CREAS).

The Service was instituted and regulated from the Brazilian Typification of Social Assistance Services, published on November 11, 2009 and reissued in 2014^2,3.

Currently in operation.

Monitoring and promoting the accountability and social protection of young people in conjunction with other social policies and the justice system.

N/A

Adolescents (12 to 18 years of age) and young people (18 to 21 years of age) who are in compliance with socio-educational measures of Probation and Provision of Services to the Community

Upon appointment of the Judiciary Branch according to the judgment of an adolescent or young person responsible for an infraction.

As in the case of the other SUAS initiatives, there is a systematic effort to register service beneficiaries in the Single Registry, as this can expand access to other services. However, inclusion in the Single Registry does not affect MSE eligibility (especially because this service is not only a right but also an obligation linked to a court decision).

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).

• According to the CREAS Monthly Service Record System (RMA), between January and August 2022 the initiative benefited, on average, 53,019 people per month, 47% of whom fulfilled a socio-educational measure, 32% under probation and 21% providing services to the community. 

• The characterization of the beneficiary profile is limited only to new beneficiaries, which in this period correspond to 18,288 individuals. Of this total, 87% are male.

There is flexibility for the activities offered to meet the determinations of the Judiciary Branch according to each specific sentence. In addition to these, the social assistance teams can propose additional activities according to the evaluation of priorities and capacities in each context. The CREAS Census reflects some guiding values that should inform the offer of activities by monitoring them through their classification according to the categories listed below:

• Preparation of the adolescent's Individual Service Plan (ISP);

• Individual care of the adolescent;

• Assistance to adolescents in groups;

• Assistance to the family of the adolescent in compliance with the Probation(LA) measure;

• Assistance with groups of families of the adolescent in compliance with the Probation (LA) measure;

• Home visit;

• Referral of the adolescent to the educational system;

• Monitoring the adolescent's school attendance;

• Referral to the Service of Community Living and Strengthening of Bonds;

• Referral of the adolescent and their family to other services and programs of the social assistance network;

• Referral to health services for the care of users and dependents of psychoactive substances;

• Referral of families or individuals to other services of the health network;

• Referral of the adolescent and their family to services of other sectoral policies;

• Referral of the adolescent to vocational courses;

• Preparation and submission of a report to the Child and Youth Justice or Public Prosecutor's Office;

• Preparation and referral of periodic reports to the social assistance management body in the municipality;

• Record of follow-up in medical records;

• Referral of the family and/or adolescent to PAEFI;

• Case discussion with other network professionals; and

• Use of restorative techniques and/or referral to locations that perform restorative practices.

In addition to these, there are also referral activities for young people obliged to provide services to the community to do so in projects that maximize the benefit generated for society and also contribute to the rehabilitation of these young people. 

Assistance in CREAS's own structure or other public spaces (especially in the case of referral for young people to provide services to the community supporting other governmental or non-governmental initiatives). There is also the possibility of home visits.

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 MSE.

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

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 factors⁵. 

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

The initiative is fully focused on children and adolescents who comply with Probation and the Community Service measure.

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

Strong intersectoral coordination with the judiciary branch, insofar as social assistance supports the monitoring of measures adopted as reparation for the infraction. Social Assistance is also responsible for sharing with the judiciary reports that guide the monitoring of sentences. The allocation of young people in socio-educational activities required to comply with their sentences is also based on the use of the Brazilian Socio-educational Assistance System (SINASE, acronym in Portuguese).  What in other countries is called “Juvenile Justice”, in Brazil is called the Brazilian Socio-Educational Service System – SINASE, with its own rules, structures, units, financing, digital platforms, rights and duties. The general management of this system is the responsibility of the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship, in coordination with other ministries and other SGD bodies.[i]

The specific adaptations of MSE varied greatly in each context, given the flexibility of state and municipal teams to adapt according to given contexts. 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.

• On September 9, 2020, joint recommendation No. 1 was published (signed by the then Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights, Ministry of Citizenship, Brazilian Council of the Public Prosecutor's Office, and the Brazilian Council of Justice). The recommendation provides for care for the socio-educational community, in the service programs of SINASE, in the context of community transmission of the Coronavirus (COVID-19), throughout the national territory and makes other provisions. The recommendation sought to avoid agglomeration of adolescents and preserve their physical safety through flexibility in complying with the measures (online service, extinction of the measure, etc.).^6,7,8

1.  GoB, Min. Desenvolvimento Social. 2014. RMV por município pagador.
2. 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.
3. GoB, Min. Desenvolvimento Social. 2014. Tipificação Nacional de Serviços Socioassistenciais. https://central.to.gov.br/download/231761.
4. GoB, Min. Desenvolvimento Social. 2023. Relatório de Informações. R.I v4. Valores repassados pelo Fundo Municipal/ Estadual de Assistência Social. Valores consolidados para dezembro de 2022.” https://aplicacoes.mds.gov.br/sagi/ri/relatorios/cidadania/#metasepagamentossnas
5. Cavalcante, Pedro, e Beatriz Bernarde Ribeiro. 2012. “O Sistema Único de Assistência Social: resultados da implementação da política nos municípios brasileiros”. Rev. Adm. Pública 46 (dezembro). https://www.scielo.br/j/rap/a/bwPZgHkvMbPcWCcYcgKHtPb/?lang=pt#.
6. GoB, Min. Cidadania 2022. Atuação da Proteção Social Especial do SUAS durante a pandemia da COVID-19. https://aplicacoes.mds.gov.br/sagi/pesquisas/documentos/relatorio/relatorio_226.pdf
7. GoB, IPEA. 2022. “Boletim de Políticas Sociais -  acompanhamento e análise N. 29, 2022.” https://portalantigo.ipea.gov.br/portal/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=39098&Itemid=
8. IPEA. 2021. “Boletim de Políticas Sociais: Acompanhamento e análise. Assistência Social”, Políticas Sociais: acompanhamento e análise, 27. http://dx.doi.org/10.38116/bps28/assistenciasocial.