COUV ACTES - Psychologie communautaire

Community Psychology: Common Values, Diverse PracticesJudiciary environment and poor families: risk or protection forrelationships?by Simone de Biazzi Ávila Batista Silveira 1 & Maria Angela Mattar Yunes 1AbstractThe quality of family relations has an expressive role over the human existence and may constitute a context forprocesses of development and learning of competencies. It also contributes to the improvement of socialstructures. The bioecological approach of human development puts forward the importance of those and otherinteractions. This study aimed to investigate the relational processes and mechanisms operating in the judiciaryenvironment that attend poor families involved in judicial conflicts. The results pointed towards a disconnectionbetween the professionals representing the judiciary system in family conflicts and the general population. Thisfact seems to bring more difficulties for the problems’ solution which is a paradox considering the duties ofprotection established at the Brazilian Federal Constitution.Key-words: family relations, poor families, judicial environmentIntroductionAlthough the quality of family relationships constitutes an important context in building processes ofhealthy human development (Rodrigo & Palácios, 1998), there are other proximal interactions in differentcontexts that may also have a relevant influence on the aspects of learning competences that promote better lifequality (Yunes, Mendes & Albuquerque, 2007). The bioecological theory of human development of UrieBronfenbrenner (Bronfenbrenner, 2005) is a reference that further explains these systems and their dynamics ofinfluences. In the specific cases of families who go through judicial conflict, the relational processes andmechanisms which operate in the judiciary environment may represent elements of risk or protection for thefamily relationships. It is also known that the condition of poverty might bring additional adversities for some ofthose families (Garbarino & Abramovitiz, 1992). Therefore, our interest in this present research had the followingaims:Investigate the relational processes and mechanisms which operate in the services attended by poor familiesinvolved in judicial conflicts;Investigate the beliefs` system and perceptions of the professionals and the families;Search indicators of risk and protection that might contribute to minimize or increase the quality of the relationallife in the families.1FURG - Universidade Federal de Rio Grande/FURG, Rio Grande, RS, Brasil205