Formation of the service area for family and disability services

In the Western Uusimaa Wellbeing Services County, there are plans to reorganize the organization so that disability services and the service area for children, young people, and families would merge to form the service area for family and disability services on January 1, 2026.

The merging of service areas would directly affect only the top management tasks. In contrast, the planned merging of social welfare guidance and counseling into one unit would affect a broader group of employees and customer service.

The internal needs for change in the merging service area will be assessed and prepared only in the next phase when the regional council initiates the implementation.

During 2025, a new unit for social services guidance and counseling would be formed. The new unit would include adult social services guidance and counseling (Neuvis), family guidance and counseling, the initial handling of child protection notifications and child protection calls, mental health and substance abuse services housing services social work counseling service calls, and disability services counseling.

The formation of the new unit has been planned during the spring with the services and staff of social services guidance and counseling.

The change would affect a total of 42 employees and three leading social counselors and social workers acting as supervisors, who would move to the newly formed unit.

According to the proposal, the operation would start on October 1, 2025. The unit would initially be located in the disability services service area and would move to the new family and disability services service area at the beginning of 2026.

The purpose of the reform of social welfare customer guidance and counseling is that in the future, it would be smoother and easier for the customer to contact the wellbeing county area, and they would not need to know in advance which social welfare service they should contact.

We particularly want to support and help our customers in weaker positions who use various social services with the reform. The aim is to lower the threshold for the customer to contact social welfare services. The change would affect social services customers other than those dealing with Senior Info.

Phone numbers would be reduced, and opening hours could be extended. Additionally, reorganization would enable the extensive use of digital transactions in social welfare customer guidance. By combining functions, the availability of Swedish-language services on the phone and in chat can also be improved.

The translation is generated by artificial intelligence.