The net is cast and the management rhythm snags

Abstract

This article presents a researcher in post-doctoral internship and her advisor’s experience report about the events around the research, oriented by an experience that happened before the events themselves. It brings transformations occurred before the establishment of the Brazilian National Health System (SUS) and during its implantation process, including the Psychiatric Reform process based on the new legislation, which contributed to the deinstitutionalization. It shows that the organization of the De Volta para Casa Program (Back Home Program) and the implementation of the Residential Therapeutic Service allowed for the protagonism of different actors and social movements lived by the researcher. She also integrated the municipal management as a partner and with a co-management agreement with a beneficent foundation to provide for the transformations needed for the outpatient care in community services to replace the psychiatric hospitalizations even before the law that guaranteed the redirection of this model. Hence, from these first places and from the current one, this paper aims to look at what was built in these years, the gambles made, the challenges faced, and the conquests observed. The eminent risk of a setback to this process is what motivated this record in the form of an experience report, which seeks an outlook after 15 years away.