The municipality of Crateús in Ceará is now a national model for monitoring the Bolsa Familia Program

Brasília, 16 July, 2015 – The municipality of Crateús, in the dry hinterland of the state of Ceará, has become a national model of good monitoring of the Bolsa Familia Program (BFP).

Crateús, the 11th most populous city in the state, became one of the finalists in 2013 of the Rosani Cunha Prize awarded by the Ministry of Social Development and Fight against Hunger (MDS), as the result of introducing a series of innovative practices, including the creation of a specialized nucleus for supporting the 14,350 families enrolled in the Unified Registry, and improving the management of BFP conditionalities which boosted access to healthcare, education and social assistance services by over 8000 families benefiting from the Program.

The municipality´s commitment to monitoring the implementation of the BPF brought about positive results in the areas of healthcare and education: children aged between 0 and seven years with vaccinations up-to-date; reduced rates of malnutrition and child mortality; medical care for 381 pregnant and nursing women; and the identification of the whereabouts of 45% of the 1661 students who had not hitherto been located for one reason or another (transferred from one school to another, etc.), thereby ensuring the monitoring of school attendance of 90% of the BFP beneficiary students. In this interview Antonio José Marques Pereira, manager of the BFP in Crateús, told us more details.

Antonio Pereira: In 2012 we encountered many problems. We had a total of 11,000 BFP beneficiaries, but we routinely came across families that had had their benefits blocked due to failure to comply with the conditionalities. We realized that the right sort of information was not getting across to these families, regardless of the fact that they were a vulnerable group, often burdened with issues related to family conflicts, drugs and lack of transport. From 2012 onwards we saw that it was necessary to do something.

AP: Before 2011 a robust monitoring policy on compliance with the conditionalities simply did not exist. Furthermore, we were not in a position to either deal with the substantial demands from the BFP beneficiaries, or to address the consequences of noncompliance. Our Health, Education and Social Assistance Secretariats each worked on a separate basis with the families. In other words, they had their own individual responsibilities for health, education and social assistance.

However, in 2012, the State called for the introduction of intersectorality between the three Secretariats. This meant that we were able to join forces in order to try and resolve the problems of noncompliance in our municipality.

AP: We received operational instructions from the MDS (Ministry of Social Development and Fight against Hunger) that gave us the go-ahead to work on an intersectoral basis in the municipalities. We also participated in training sessions. In 2012, given the fact that the benefits of the noncompliant families were blocked or suspended, we realized that we needed to focus on operationalizing this intersectoral approach.

Thereafter, we set to work jointly and, in 2013, established the BFP Intersectoral Nucleus. This effectively meant bringing together the Secretariats of Health, Education and Social Assistance to work together as one unit. The Nucleus consists of a team that is invariably well informed, interested in training, always willing to try and understand new programs, to take initiatives and to prepare for the future.

AP: We decided that the managers of the BFP needed to work jointly with the operators of the Education, Health and Social Assistance Systems. We assembled the various operators in a room, together with an educationalist and a social worker, to discuss the provision and delivery of information to the beneficiary families. Subsequently, this team began to visit families and give lectures in the communities.

We were thus in a better position to detect problems. We started, for example, searching for the students that had been recorded in the systems as untraceable. We then created the Bolsa Familia Program Intersectoral Nucleus. This included all the main stakeholders: teachers, school directors, health agents and so on.

Since then, with the team firmly established and in full operation, these professionals are now responsible for informing us about irregular situations. By working with the professionals from the three main areas we can see the effects and results of our initiatives.

AP: We certainly obtained results in healthcare and education. For example, in the education area, in March 2013, there were 1361 students who should have been attending school but who had not been traced. However, by November of the same year this number had dropped to 265. This represents a good achievement (5 times fewer than previously). While the students became more aware of why they needed to attend  school, we were also able to boost their guaranteed rights such as by providing access to school transport for the children of families living in more remote areas.

Meanwhile, in the health area, we saw a notable improvement of the indicators. At the end of 2014 we had 99.95% of all the municipality´s pregnant women being attended, as well as having children with their vaccination records up-to-date. These substantial numbers are considerably higher than the national average.

Using home visits and awareness campaigns, and helped by the motivational spirit of all those involved, we were able to turn our attention more to our concern with the quality of the data of the Unified Registry, which became increasingly more reliable (good quality data held in the Unified Registry is essential for locating and monitoring families in the health and education areas).

AP: This obviously has to be an ongoing task for us. The Intersectoral Nucleus continues to provide information by radio, pamphlets and regular visits to the communities. The Nucleus prioritizes the most problematic families, but sometimes it is the community leaders or the school directors that call us.

During field visits we talk a lot about overcoming poverty, the Bolsa Familia Program and the importance of children attending school. Furthermore, we train the social workers. The first training session took place in 2013, and we have just finished the second one for training new entrants and recycling the team.

AP: Yes, we are satisfied. We were finalists in 2013 in the MDS Rosani Cunha Prize competition. This has brought us into national prominence. But we still need to work even harder to help break the cycle of poverty.

AP: You need to want to make changes, and to ensure that information reaches both the beneficiaries and those whose job it is to manage the Program. In this way everyone can understand and contribute, as well as know the importance of helping others. By having access to the right information, we succeeded in forming professional staff capable of fulfilling their roles, and also helped BFP beneficiaries to be aware of their rights.