Good Practices to Protect Children and Youth from Hazardous Work

1. Good Practices to Protect Children and Youth from Hazardous Work Using the Public Health Sector to Reach Children and youth in Hazardous Work: Experience from Brazil Suyanna Linhales Barker, DPH Washington DC, 2011

2. Background and legal framework: Engaging the National Health System • In 2003, at the request of the National Committee for the Eradication of Child Labor (CONAETI), the Ministry of Health published the First National Health Policy for the Eradication of Child Labor and the Protection of the Adolescent Worker. • In 2004 the Ministry of Health published the Decree 777, which established compulsory notification of all workplace accidents including accidents with children and adolescents. • In 2005 the Guidelines for Comprehensive Health Care of Economically Active Children and Adolescent were published. • In 2007 the national notification system was fully implemented.

3. The Guidelines for Comprehensive Health Care of Economically Active Children and Adolescent

4. Development of methodologies to train health care providers to use the Guidelines The training methodologies include two main learning goals with specific objectives: • Provide health Care to child and adolescent workers: • Understanding of the main problems affecting the target population; • Developing programs to prevent, provide early diagnosis and accompanying the main health problems; • Including the family, community and social networks in the development and implementation of relevant primary health care actions, and • Engaging the child and adolescent social and legal protection system. • Surveillance of child and adolescent workers’ health: • Monitoring the health of child and adolescent workers or of those who were previously involved in work. • Creating inter-sectorial and interdisciplinary activities to promote the debate addressing the impact of child labor, and • Organizing information systems related to the adolescent workers’ health and reporting all cases of child labor. 3800 technicians were trained between 2005 and 2010.

5. The Self-Learning Curriculum in Child and Adolescent Occupational Safety and Health

6. Atenção à Saúde de Crianças e Adolescentes Economicamente Ativos Atenção à Saúde de Crianças e Adolescentes Economicamente Ativos On-line environment for distance learning courses in Child and Adolescent Occupational Safety and Health

7. Preliminary Data: Reported Child and Youth Work Related Injuries from 2007-2009 (SINAN/Ministry of Health/Brazil)

8. Demographic Information(SINAN/Ministry of Health/Brazil)

9. Main Result: Notification Increase

10. Including the public health service in the actions of monitoring and eliminating child labor and hazardous adolescent labor Public health systems perform a key role in the eradication of child labor and protection of adolescent workers by engaging professionals and routines in: • Identification of working children and adolescents. • Providing information for children, adolescent and families regarding health and work safety. • Assessing the casual link between a child’s and adolescent’s work and his/her health needs. • Carrying out health surveillance monitoring • Coordination with other public sectors and civil society to carry out actions to prevent child labor and eradicate hazardous adolescent labor.

11. Using the Public Health Sector to Reach Children and youth in Hazardous Work: Experience from Brazil • Implementation of a notification system of the accidents and ill health related to child labor and youth hazardous work; • Creation of a technical standard for the operationalization of the flow of care and referral of child labor and youth hazardous work cases identified in the health sector. • Training of health providers in how to identify, care and notify ill health related do child labor and youth hazardous work.