Family care of users with cancer in the face of the Brazilian’s State counter-reform

Abstract

Since 1990, with the neoliberal ideological rise in Brazil, there has been a dismantling of the social rights conquered in the Federal Constitution of 1988. Denominated as a counter-reform of the State, the neoliberalism marked for the working class, mainly with the intensification of work, fragmentation and focusing on social policies for a specific group and damage to the development of the population's full health. The family, as the privileged space of social policies, directly suffers the impacts of this process. Observing this context, the present article analyzes the reality of families that perform care for their members aggravated by chronic oncological diseases in the stage of Palliative Care, to understand the repercussions of the counter-reform situation of the Brazilian State to these families. A study was carried out with qualitative techniques of field interview, direct observation and bibliographic research to reach the proposed objective. Four family members of users attended by the Home Service of a Reference Hospital in the city of Recife, Pernambuco, were interviewed. The study elucidates the feminization of family care and the absence of social policies for caregivers, demonstrating a lack of care for caregivers.