Support to develop of the Swedish-language services nationally

All seven bilingual wellbeing service counties as well as the City of Helsinki and HUS cooperate on this mission. In addition, the mission shall be coordinated with the three bilingual collaborative areas for healthcare and social welfare, the so called YTA-areas (Southern Finland, Western Finland and Northern Finland). Thereto, collaboration with research and educational actors, organizations and the social competence centers are important to achieve results.

With the Swedish-language collaboration, we can:

• reduce overlapping work, divide tasks and resources
• gather expertise and competence
• spread information and exchange working practices
• work with common goals and priorities

The main objective of the special assignment is to improve the conditions for a functioning Swedish-language service throughout the country, and to support the bilingual welfare regions in providing social and health care services in the minority language. The objectives are achieved by:

1. coordinating and co-operating within the network of bilingual welfare areas (the tasks of the network are described below).
2. co-operating and influencing at the national level, e.g. with regard to monitoring indicators and staff availability, as well as research and development co-operation.

The special assignment also coordinates an inspirational network between Finland and Sweden, where good practices and innovations are shared between the two countries. The network meetings are held on the first Monday of each month.

The network is founded to support the bilingual welfare areas in their development work. The network gathers approximately once a month. The purpose of the network is to:

• Identify, share, cooperate and support the development of tools, good models and practices. Examples include the development of policy documents and other internal regulations, issues related to staff availability and language skills, models for monitoring indicators and data collection, and the development of minority language services.
• Spread information about interesting ongoing projects.
• Support the implementation of (Swedish-speaking) research and development in the welfare areas.
• Support/start common development projects.
• Follow the content of the YTA-agreements from a language point of view.
• Act as a contact link between organizations, the education sector, research actors and the welfare areas.

More information: Specialist Kia Leidenius, kia.leidenius (at) luvn.fi