This book reflects on the particularities of the role of social workers in the socio-occupational space of urgent and emergency care in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, in the light of the ethical and political parameters that guide the profession. Social work emerged in Brazil due to the state's need to respond to the multiple expressions of the "social question", its object of work.

Our discussion is based on the assertion that the profession - part of the social and technical division of labour - carries out its activities under particular conditions and under the intrinsic and contradictory dialectical relationship established between the state and the social classes. The context in which social workers work makes the demands more complex, creating new requirements for social workers in their day-to-day work.

In public health policy, social workers are called upon to intervene in users' health-disease process. The socio-occupational space of urgent and emergency care is full of challenges for the materialisation of the principles of the ethical-political project, but the possibilities for their materialisation are set out in the reality where the work of social workers takes place.

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