Child protection|“There is a serious shortage of child protection workers in our welfare region,” says the social director of the Ostrobothnia welfare region.
The summary is made by artificial intelligence and checked by a human.
In Ostrobothnia, the situation of child protection is particularly worrying.
All social workers in the Ostrobothnia welfare region have an average of 48 clients.
Child protection the situation has been particularly worrying in Ostrobothnia this spring, said the Institute of Health and Welfare (THL) on Friday.
According to THL’s recent survey, all child protection social workers in the Ostrobothnia welfare region have an average of no less than 48 clients. Social director of the Ostrobothnia welfare region Carina Nåhls says that the welfare area has taken measures to correct the overload.
“The situation is worrying and we are doing everything we can.”
Social director Carina Nåhls
In the welfare region of Ostrobothnia, there have been difficulties in filling positions. At the beginning of this year, the staffing of Child Protection was tightened so that one social worker can have a maximum of 30 children as clients, while previously the number was 35.
All child protection workers in the Ostrobothnia welfare area exceeded the maximum number of clients. In addition, up to a third of the customers exceeded the statutory processing times.
How do social workers cope with large numbers of clients?
“There is a serious shortage of child protection workers in our welfare area. Our employees are really stressed. We’ll do our best that they wouldn’t be.”
According to the latest information, six employees were missing from child protection in the welfare area. Before the welfare area was formed, the biggest shortage was staff working in services for the elderly and disabled, but now it has shifted to child protection.
On Thursday, the change negotiations ended in the welfare area, and at the same time the recruitment ban, which has made it difficult to hire new employees, also ended. Nåhls considers it important that enough new employees are trained in the field, and that some of them could also be attracted to Ostrobothnia.
A total of twenty social workers are missing from all social services in the welfare area, of which the second missing half is made up solely of child welfare workers. Nåhls reminds that also in other welfare areas the need for employees is constantly greater than the number of employees.
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“We have put children’s rights first.”
How is overload reflected in the service received by child welfare clients in Ostrobothnia’s welfare region?
It’s a difficult question to answer, says Nåhls. It is difficult for him to assess how the overload affects, for example, the quality of the service.
Nåhls praises the current child welfare social workers, whose workload the welfare district is trying to reduce, for example by making changes to their job description. At the beginning of the year, the welfare area has also implemented an incentive system, which is intended to reward employees for their commitment.
“It is important for us to show that we value the commitment and effort of our employees.”
What has the welfare area done to remedy the situation and how did the situation end?
The welfare area is trying to fix the current child protection situation by investing in, for example, the whole of services for children and families. In the area, the focus is on developing, among other things, preventive services and, in addition, other services that support children in child protection.
According to THL, fewer and fewer welfare areas were able to meet the new child protection requirements. According to the department, since the beginning of the year, only South Karelia and Helsinki were successful in organizing legal child protection.
According to THL, the stricter dimensioning of the number of customers has its downside. In some welfare areas, not all children in need of child protection get their own designated social worker right away, and so-called waiting lists arise.
According to THL’s report, it was possible to appoint a social worker immediately in about half of the areas. According to Nåhls, in THL’s recent report, it is not taken into account that there are no children in Ostrobothnia’s child welfare who are waiting to get access to child welfare services.
In Ostrobothnia, a social worker is designated for every child in need of child protection. This has an impact on the large number of clients per social worker in the welfare region of Ostrobothnia, says Nåhls.
“We have put children’s rights first.”
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