Abstract:

Introduction:
The child abuse is a complex phenomenon, multifaceted, rooted in social relations, naturalized and trivialized in some contexts. Recent decades have witnessed a significant increase in cases of child abuse in the world, while also more emphasis in reporting and coping, particularly by world organizations and also expressed in public policies as it has been in Brazil. (1) The Primary Health Care (PHC) is one of the spaces in which health professionals can visualize and deal with child abuse, because they take care of children, their families in the territory, as well as kindergartens and schools. Prepare professionals in the PHC to deal with this phenomenon has been a challenge. We believe that this preparation should be on the development of professional skills and among them the ethical-political knowledge are key because it is essentially the underlying values to the professional practices.

Objective:
To identify the knowledges of ethical-political dimension of professionals competencies of PHC, to deal with child abuse.

Methodology:
Qualitative research with theoretical and methodological basis in the Theory of Praxis Intervention of Collective Health Nursing (2). The project was approved by the research ethics committee of educational and health institutions. The subjects were researchers, teachers of public and private institutions and PHC professionals. Data collection was held in Curitiba, capital of Paraná state, Brazil, in August 2013. The strategy used was critical-emancipatory workshops (3).

Results:
It was considered that the critical-emancipatory and reflexive pedagogy is one of the best strategies to the development of ethical and political competences to deal with the phenomenon of child abuse. Furthermore, generation and gender categories were those that stood out to understand it. The knowledges considered essential for the development of competence in ethical-political dimension were: values about childhood in contemporary western societies; historicity of legal-political apparatus of child protection; universal rights of the child and the Brazilian childhood protection’s laws; historicity of the construction of femininity, masculinity, motherhood, fatherhood and responsibility towards the child care; childhood as a social phenomenon; the family as a social institution historically constituted; intersectoral coping with violence; responsibility of PHC with the child and family; potential of networks of protection and coordination with political and legal State authorities.

Conclusions:
The study identified the knowledges of the ethical-political dimension of health professional compencies in fighting child abuse in PHC. Highlighted among them the values about childhood, children's rights, families and duties of state in the contemporary societies and their historicity. Moreover the study allowed to identify the gender and generation as essential categories for critical reflection of reality and thus to intervene in the phenomenon of child abuse.

References:
[1] Apostólico MR, Nóbrega CR, Guedes RN, Fonseca RMGS da, Egry EY. Characteristics of violence against children in a Brazilian Capital. Rev. Latino-Am. Enfermagem. 2012; 20(2):266-73.
[2] Egry EY. Saúde coletiva: construindo um novo método em enfermagem. São Paulo: Ícone; 1996.
[3] Fonseca RMGS, Amaral MA. Reinterpretação da potencialidade das oficinas de trabalho crítico-emancipatórias. Rev bras enferm.2012;65(5):780-7.

Keywords:

Health professional competences, ethical-political knowledge, child abuse, primary health care, health professional education.