Fields of Practice

Throughout Finland, open-access processes and individual events are used to support the welfare of local youth. In addition, social issues found in high risk populations are handled in collaboration with local and municipal authorities. For example, the city of Helsinki Youth Services has local projects aimed at preventing conflicts in residential suburbs.

Adventure education is used to strengthen group cohesion, social skills and social responsibility. School camps and interventions are also used to address specific social needs and interaction problems. For example, school camps are used to reach out to pupils by the comprehensive schools in the city of Lahti in collaboration with Lahti Youth Services.

In Finland, interest in adventure education is rapidly growing in the sector of early childhood education, where it builds group cohesion, teaches the skills to take care of themselves and others, and encourages them to ask for and offer help. Adventure education strengthens a child’s relationship with nature and lays the foundation for environmental awareness. For example, there are preschools that carry out most of their activities and learning outdoors in the forest.

Child social work in Finland has traditionally used outdoor and adventure-based methods since the early days of municipal child welfare services. Now, there is a growing interest in building more clearly defined interventions and evaluating them to develop new evidence on their effectiveness. For example, the social impact bond (SIB) for children aims to discover new creative working methods for child welfare officials in all of Finland.

There is a growing interest for adopting more experiential methods to reach youth client groups and young adults unmotivated or unable to work on a verbal level. For example, the Foundation for the Rehabilitation of Children and Young People and the Mannerheim League for Child Welfare are working with children and adolescents with severe neuro-psychiatric symptoms in Paimio.