Interventions with infants and families at risk: Context and culture

✍ Scribed by Salvador Celia

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 43 KB
• Volume: 25
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0163-9641
• DOI: 10.1002/imhj.20022

✦ Synopsis

The child I was cries on the road, I left it there when I came to be who I am; But today, seeing that what I am is nothing. I want to fetch who I was back where it remained.

-Fernando Pessoa

THE WORLD TODAY

Recently, on May 8, 2002, at the United Nations Conference on Childhood, we heard statements such as: "We are not expenses, we are investments"; "We want a world worthy of the children, because a world worthy of children is a world worthy for all"; "We are not the sources of the problems, we are the resources needed to solve them." These statements were made by children representing 189 countries and represented a real call for help.

The answers of the adults representing these countries may be summed up in the statement by Koffi Annan, the Secretary General of the United Nations: "We, the adults, have failed deplorably to guarantee their rights, because approximately 150 million of the 2 billion children in the world are malnourished, almost 11 million die before the age of five, over 120 million do not attend school, 10 million die yearly from avoidable diseases, and about 300,000 fight wars" (Folha de Sa ˜o Paulo, May 2, 2002).

BRAZIL TODAY

Recent official data show a certain amount of improvement for the child population in Brazil. For example, over a 10-year period, the child mortality rate fell from 48.0 to 29.6 despite the great differences between regions: Northeast, 44.2; South, 19.7. Schooling has increased at all ages, but 88.4% of the children from birth to three years of age are not in day care. It also is interesting to note that most of the children in the middle and high socioeconomic classes in