INSTRUMENTALITY OF SOCIAL WORK IN THE ASSESSMENT OF DISABILITY

Abstract

This article analyzes the ethical-political and theoretical-methodological dimensions of disability assessment carried out by social workers from the National Institute of Social Security (INSS) for Social Security and Social Assistance policies, in an analysis of the Social Service's instrumentality in this assessment. With a biopsychosocial approach, the WHO's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (CIF) innovates by learning and carrying out assessments related to health contexts and conditions. In turn, the 2006 UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, internalized in Brazil as a constitutional amendment in 2009, has an interactional concept of disability like that of CIF, based on bodily, sensory and mental characteristics related to barriers. Brazil has adopted CIF since 2007 in Social Assistance, in the recognition of the right to the Continued Benefit, and since 2014 in Social Security, in the assessment of applicants with disabilities to the retirement of Complementary Law No. 142, of 2013. For a qualitative and reflective analysis -critique of the institutionalism of the two policies in the use of CIF, the text argues that the instrumentality of Social Work is directly related to the requirements necessary for the evaluation of the domains of Environmental Factors and Activities and Participation of CIF, reinforcing the understanding of disability as a restriction of social participation. This helps to internalize the principles and guidelines of the concept of functionality in its joint apprehension with the particularity of people with disabilities, above all, the manifestations of the social issue experienced by them, object of intervention of social workers.