Territories of Frailty: Aging and Public Policy – A Project of Continuing Education

In the contemporary world, the progressive aging of the population is both a major achievement and a huge challenge for developing countries, especially when it relates to public policies for the elderly. The scenario is particularly worrying in peri-urban spaces, which we call “territories of fragility”, in which multiple deficiencies overlap — basic sanitation, housing, accessibility, education and health — those aspects coupled with the disruption of community ties, negatively impact the aging process. In this article, we analyze the previously presented scenario through the results of a continued education project that had as students 420 professionals that currently work in the Secretariat of Social Assistance of the city of São Paulo (Brazil). The aim of the project was the improvement of the work in the social assistance services network, especially the ones that are a part of the basic social protection, aimed at the most vulnerable part of the population. The use of professional-centered training methodology takes into account what happens in the field, it is based on daily problems, on the perception of skills and abilities, on the challenges and opportunities given by occupied spaces, in a dialogical and critical perspective. In other words, the result was a collection of 420 “first-hand” narratives that unveils a reality that is the opposite of what was expected. For the enrichment of the reflection, we present the commitments to this educational process — through the narratives of teachers and supervisors — in the work of recognizing the action field, the difficulties and achievements in the implementation of the project, and in practice with the groups. Content analysis indicates, in the complexity of the narrative, how all individuals that were a part of the project overcame life-work challenges and articulated knowledge about the aging process in territories of fragility.