A study on admitting children and adolescents into institutions for people with disabilities

Abstract This study seeks to investigate the care institutions for people with disabilities in São Paulo State and analyze the admission of children and adolescents to these services. This is a qualitative descriptive study with a cross-sectional sample. In its first stage, this study mapped the institutions in different free-access registers of public and contracted services, tied to federal, state, or municipal management in the areas of childhood, social assistance, and health. In its second step, data were collected by reading the medical records of a specific institution. As a result, this study points to the lack of a single typification or specific regulation, the absence of deinstitutionalization practices, and the lack of coordination with the intersectoral network. Results also show that the recurrent institutionalization of children and adolescents in these institutions and describes the characteristics of this practice: the occurrence of transinstitutionalization, hospitalizations via judicial determination, and lack or precariousness of territorial services and intersectoral actions. Finally, this research points to the need for implementing substitutive networks and developing intersectoral actions of care for children and adolescents and highlights the key relevance of further developing knowledge about the institutionalized population.