PUBLIC POLICIES FOR CHILDHOOD: A STUDY OF THE CONDITION OF CHILDREN IN BRAZIL AND SPAIN DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

Currently, what is known about child and adolescent care is that there is a very solid national and international legislative framework, which aims at the care and protection of children, despite the great social inequality existing in all countries. However, this situation worsened even more during the Covid 19 pandemic, which reduced the effectiveness of most actions aimed at guaranteeing the rights not only of children, but of the entire population. In this perspective, the present work has the main objective of analyzing the main public policies developed in Spain and Brazil aimed at children, during the Covid 19 Pandemic. The paper has a two-fold specific objective, namely, to present the Laws that ensure the rights of children in the Spanish and Brazilian scope, and to provide and discuss public policies implemented for childcare in Spain and Brazil during the pandemic. This research was characterized as qualitative, exploratory, bibliographic, and documentary. It was based on authors who study the history and sociology of childhood as well as official documents published by the countries under study and research that focused on childhood in the pandemic context.  We concluded that the direct and indirect effects of the pandemic were devastating and similar for childhood and with greater impacts on the most vulnerable children in both countries. The actions put into practice were analogously palliative, punctual, and global. Despite advances in the fight against the virus, in both countries there were setbacks in childcare. Throughout the social isolation, the invisibility of children seems to have intensified in the absence of specific actions that could not reach their homes, for obvious reasons, except through non-face-to-face classes. Therefore, it is urgent to rebuild children's rights through public policies that combat the increase in inequality between them and the delay in physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional development caused by the pandemic.