Community of Practice in Occupational Therapy in the Unified Social Assistance System: articulating meetings and promoting debates in social occupational therapy

Abstract

With the growing number of occupational therapists working in the Unified Social Assistance System (SUAS), in Brazil, the need for education processes increases, focusing on professional performance critical development in this field. Based on this education demand, a project was created in October 2020: “Communities of Practice in Occupational Therapy at SUAS: professional and strategy articulation”, with the aim of promoting exchanges of knowledge and experiences between occupational therapists, workers in social assistance units. The objective of this article is to present the possibilities and limits of work at SUAS, from the point of view of occupational therapists who work there and who were participants in the Community of Practice, analyzing whether and how their professional actions have been related to the social occupational therapy theoretical-methodological foundation. For this, all the recording material produced in the two project cycles, effective from October 2020 to July 2021, was revisited. The information extracted was organized in a table that grouped the themes found. Data analysis revealed two main aspects that allow the correlation of the professionals’ actions with the social occupational therapy theoretical-methodological foundation, namely: the necessary reading about the inseparability between micro and macrosocial factors for the development of work and the professional and political dimensions of the occupational-therapeutic actions. In both debates, the social occupational therapy theoretical-methodological foundation was and has been the guiding thread of the process, enabling a social reading and greater appropriation of technicalprofessional purposes within the scope of social assistance.