Assistance to women in situations of violence: participatory construction of a working protocol

Construcción participativa de un protocolo de trabajo

Abstract

This experience reports the participatory construction of a Network Protocol to address violence against women in a medium-sized municipality in Minas Gerais state. Considering a scenario of lack of specialized policies, workers organized themselves in order to build a dialogic and autonomous collective that, based on the premises of action research, could propose an instrument that would regulate and guarantee competent and intersectoral attention to women in situations of sexual and domestic violence. The experience resulted in a diagnosis constructed in a collective way, which pointed out the main institutional challenges experienced by the services. Also, based on the initiative of the professionals who made up the working group, articulated with a broad mobilization of civil society, the Network Protocol was approved as a Popular Initiative Law in the municipality. The collective, solidary and multiprofessional work, which gave rise to the public document, continued, after approval of the Law, through a technical committee organized to follow up the Network Protocol, supporting an educational space for discussion of care, awareness and permanent education of professionals.