More Than Resistances: Mutual Support as a Provocation to Family Intervention in Chile's Child Protection System

Practitioners who implement family interventions in Chile's child and adolescent policy confront daily tensions. These difficulties arise from the dysfunctional operation of this institutional framework and are a consequence of the neoliberalism imposed on the Chilean state during the civil-military dictatorship (1973–1990). In response, practitioners carry out discreet, precarious, and fragmented forms of professional resistance that remain confined to the individual sphere of action of those who enact them. In this article, we propose that mutual support can be a practice that amplifies the effects of these professional resistances within family intervention. Drawing on individual interviews with practitioners working in Chile's child and adolescent policy, the study analyzes gestures that run counter to the neoliberal logics embedded in Chile's child-protection policy and in the professional subjectivities of those who implement it. From a vulnerable position, these professionals must know how to strategize to survive and safeguard their work with families.