Western Uusimaa Wellbeing Services County to develop social reporting to improve services

Social reporting and the related tool will be developed in preparation by the Western Uusimaa Wellbeing Services County in cooperation with the City of Espoo and the Western and Central Uusimaa centre for excellence on social welfare Sosiaalitaito. Social reporting is one way of performing structural social work, which binds municipalities legally and will do the same for wellbeing services counties. According to Kaisa Palomäki, an expert in adult social services at the City of Espoo, according to the Social Welfare Act, structural social work has three key tasks:

• Provide information on clients' needs and their societal connections as well as on the impact of social services and other social welfare provided to meet these needs.
• Propose targeted measures and proposals for measures to prevent and remedy social problems and to develop living and operating environments for the residents of the municipality.
• Integrate social welfare expertise with planning in other municipal sectors and cooperate with other operators to develop social work and the range of other service and support measures. 

The social reporting tool enables social workers to report on findings and other phenomena they have observed in their work. Reporting allows for the systematic collection of information that highlights, among other things, gaps between services provided by authorities. Those who work in the customer interface often notice these gaps and shortcomings in their work, and this important information can be collected systematically through social reporting. “The transition to a reporting system that covers the entire Western Uusimaa Wellbeing Services County will also provide important information on regional similarities and disparities,” Palomäki says. The tool can also be used to highlight good practices on a wider scale.

A social reporting form was introduced in Espoo in autumn 2021, and a reasonable number of forms have already been submitted to social services for families. The development of cross-sectoral cooperation and resource allocation are among the matters that have emerged from these reports. This will allow for issues to be taken into account in the development of services and raised in the structural social work network.

Project Manager Satu Meriläinen-Porras from the ‘Paljon palveluja tarvitsevat asiakkaat’ (Frequent attenders) project, considers it to be important for the future to be aware of what can be done to promote matters raised through reporting, to provide information to municipal residents and to utilise the results of reporting in the development of cooperation. “The results can also be used to support preparation work for decision-making and to justify proposed measures – employees can genuinely use the tool to influence the development of their own work,” Meriläinen-Porras says.

Meriläinen-Porras also mentions the ease of use and agility of the form, compared to some of the earlier tools. For the future, the purpose is to intensify cooperation with health care, among other things, including as part of comprehensive quality management.