Evaluating child care in the Family Health Strategy.

Objective: to evaluate the healthcare provided to children under two years old by the Family Health Strategy.

Method: evaluative, quantitative, cross-sectional study that used the Primary Care Assessment Tool - Child Version for measuring the access, longitudinality, coordination, integrality, family orientation and community orientation.

Results: a total of 586 adults responsible for children under two years old and linked to 33 health units in eleven municipalities of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, were interviewed. The evaluation was positive for the attributes longitudinality and coordination, and negative for access, integrality, Family orientation and community orientation.

Conclusion: there are discrepancies between health needs of children and what is offered by the service; organizational barriers to access; absence of counter-reference; predominance of curative and long-standing and individual preventive practices; verticalization in organization of actions; and lack of good communication between professionals and users.