The psychological practices in public policies of social assistance, public secutity and youth

From the implementation of the Public Social Assistance System, in Brazil, the number of psychologists has increased in social, security and youth services. In this sense, social assistance coordinated with other public policies of social protection directed to guarantee rights that has constituted as a place of research and problematization in the psychological field. Thus, this article aims to analyze the place of psychology in public policies of assistance, security and youth in two directions: first, from the positivist heritage of psychology; and, in a second way, it focuses on the practices taking into account how public policies implement the constitutional rights, but the processes that operationalize and the obstacles they face open several intervention strategies. To foster this debate, we suggest a permanent problematization of, at least, three questions: what are we doing, as are we doing and what are the effects of these practices.