Resumen:
The advent of the Sistema Único de Assistência Social – SUAS [Single System of Social Assistance], brought important changes in the reconfiguration of the Política Nacional de Assistência Social-PNAS [National Policy of Social Assistance], among them the organization of this public policy to broadly affect the whole national territory and attain the principles of universality, equity, wholeness, social control and decentralization. Based on this assertion, the goal of this paper is to analyze the process of Evolution of the PNAS – pointing to advances and inflections in making this social policy effective, having as a base the data offered by the Brazilian municipalities. To reach the proposed goal we opted for the quantitative approach, the documental and bibliographic research. The data of the research were obtained based on the SUAS Census, in the periods within the years of 2007 and 2011, specifically the Northeast region. The theoretical referential contemplates an approach with reference to the history of Social Assistance in Brazil, of the System of Social Protection, of the constitution of the public policy, of its management and its refutations in the Policy of Social Assistance. The results indicate advances with regard to management, but also point out challenges to be confronted: the understanding of the policy as a duty of the state and a right of the citizen, the financing, the composition of the teams, the physical structure and that of the equipment, the precariousness of the work situation, the services rendered and the attendance. One considers that, in spite of all these challenges, these inflections, show that the work is instigating, challenging, and requires commitment and team work besides more effort on the part of the State.
