Children and adolescents: abso lute priority?

Abstract

The present article seeeks to correlate the emergence of social rights and their consolidation into social policies. Special emphasis is given to the trajectory of child and adolescent legislation, whose viewpoint of assistance and protection has always sought to defend society from its least privileged members, through predominance of institutional confinement. There is brief exposition of the social processes that had gradually been preparing a situation favourable to the promulgation of anew legislation (Act 8069/90), embodied in the Statute of the Childand Adolescent and which is regulated by Article 227 of the Brazilian Constitution of 1988. It points out the vicissitudes of the new Law, and then examines the obstacles to its implementation, related to mental structures, labour practices and forms of organization. Among the forms of organisation, special attention is dedicated to the analysis of the Council of Rights and Tutelaries, mechanisms created by the Law, to substantiate the proposal for participative democracy.