Our Work
Our methodology is based on the understanding that children cannot be discharged from hospital without first ascertaining what conditions await them at home. Extreme poverty and the inability to carry on treatment are two factors that increase the risk of children relapsing and consequently returning to hospital.
At Associação Saúde Criança (ASC), we have developed a Family Action Plan, or PAF (Plano de Ação Familiar), which is designed to break the vicious circle of poverty-illness-hospitalization-discharge-rehospitalization-death by getting to the root cause of the problem. We check whether there is an emotional or professional deficit in the family, which can be exacerbated by the circumstances of extreme poverty in which they live. In many cases, mothers give up paid work to take care of their sick child, while the father is usually absent. The lack of access to information about personal care, hygiene, sexuality, disease, nutrition, rights and official documents, among others, is also a hurdle against the restructuring of the family.
Saúde Criança developed a powerful methodology to deliver social inclusion to less fortunated people.
Muhammad Yunus, Prêmio Nobel
One of the main results of Saúde Criança was soon felt in the Pediatric Ward of Hospital da Lagoa, because the hospitalization we call social hospitalization no longer exists. In other words, those children that returned due to their social condition, that brought back the disease, such hospitalizations no longer exist. They are over.
Dr. Odilon Arantes, Chief of Pediatrics
