Going Back Home
The Going Back Home program was established by President Lula, through the signing of Federal Law 10,708 on the 31st of July 2003. It assorts the psychosocial rehabilitation regulations which assist patients that have remained under psychiatric confinement for a long time.
The aim of this program is to effectively contribute towards the social insertion process of these people, encouraging the organization of a wide and varied web of assistance and care resources, facilitating their social relationships, ensuring their overall well being and encouraging them to make use of their civil and political rights, as well as their rights as citizens.
Apart from that, the Going Back Home project caters to the precepts of Law 10,216, which determines that patients that have been admitted into hospital for long periods of time (or whose situation is judged as being one of serious institutional dependency nature) acquire the right to be subject to a specific policy of highly planned and psychosocial rehabilitation assistance.
The program has more than 2600 beneficiaries to date, in all its national territory. They receive a sum of R$240,00 monthly in their own bank accounts.
The program for the reduction of long-stays hospital wards and the therapeutic residence services provide an essential backbone to the Going Back Home program. It represents, at the same time, an effective deinstitutionalizing process and the rescuing one’s citizenship.
This is essential for people who have been affected by mental illnesses and subjected to hardship in Brazilian psychiatric hospitals. The psychosocial rehabilitation aid, established by the Going Back Home program, also has a payment of damages feature, for those who, for lack of options, were subjected to degrading treatment, and kept from enjoying their basic rights as citizens.
