The friends of the young association

The friends of the young association Torikatu 28 Fin - 90100 Oulu FINLAND Phone 00358 85341500 Fax 00358 85341550 Contact: Marja Irjala marja.irjala@nuorten-yst.fi

THE FRIENDS OF THE YOUNG - ASSOCIATION
Working since 1907 for the benefit of Children, Young People and the Handicapped.

The Friends of the Young - Association was founded in 1907 by Mr. Georg A. Waenerberg in Oulu, Finland. It is a national organisation providing different kinds of services in the field of social work, both institutional and non-institutional care. The activities of the organisation are divided into the following three areas: Child Welfare and Social Work with Intoxicant Abusers, Preventive Child Welfare, and Social Work with the Disabled.

The guiding principles of the organisation are to add to the services provided by society, to specialize in certain services and to develop new operational models.

Child Welfare and Social Work with Intoxicant Abusers

Pohjolakoti was founded in 1915 to provide care for boys and girls between the ages of 10 and 19 based on the 14 § and 16 § of the child welfare law, supportive action is also offered to their families. The main part of the activities is located in Muhos with 10 family homes, 23 supported flats, 10 family rehabilitation housing, and a service centre which includes educational and schooling services, health care, psychiatric consultation, and non-institutional social care services.

Pohjolakoti maintains three regional units and also a multi-cultural family-lik e care facility. It also provides different kinds of non-institutional and after care services, part of which through experimental projects financed by the RAY (The Finnish Slot Machine Association).

Preventive Child Welfare

Special Care Facility Väliporras has 11 places for girls and boys between the ages of 6 and 21. It is located in Oulu. There are 7 permanent places and 4 places for the maturing young. The communal social boards send the children and the young to Väliporras. The decision is based either on the 14 § or the 16 § of the child welfare law. Väliporras offers a home-like haven for children and the young who have encountered problems in their lives: problems at home, an unsafe life situation, problems at school, alcohol or other substance abuse. Väliporras also provides diverse experimental non-institutional child welfare activities financed by RAY (Finnish Slot Machine Association).

Social Work with the Disabled

Toivola-koti is a work and training facility for the mentally handicapped and a provider of housing services in Muhos. It was founded in 1926 to provide services for approximately 100 mentally handicapped persons annually. It provides instruction and work services and round-the-year housing services. Work training is given in gardening, arts and crafts, handicrafts, wood-work, maintenance, catering and the laundry. Toivola-koti has dormitories in various locations around the Oulu province. Kintas-work is aimed at the young and the young adults with mental problems and its purpose is to help them to live independently and to gain and keep control of their own lives. The Finnish Slot Machine Association (RAY) is a significant enabler of the work due to the allocated financial aid for the work.

Better Future for the Family - Project 1998-2000 coming to its end

Better Future for the Family - project (BFF-project) belongs to the area of Preventive Child Welfare in our association. It is a three-year project with two project-workers in Oulu. We work together with the families with children, day care staff (especially six kindergartens), social workers and the two most important educational establishments, the Oulu University and the Oulu Polytechnic.

Main goals in BFF-project are to 1) support families with children in their everyday life through different voluntary-based activities and 2) develop and improve preventive family-orientated working methods in day care.

During the project we have put up dozens of different kinds of activities aimed at the families: thematic conversation evenings, family picnics, group activities for mothers, expert visits in the kindergartens, just to mention but a few. On this basis some families have contacted us and wanted us to come to their home to talk about the difficulties they have in every-day life. We have named our way of working with the families to be so called "Instructive Family Counselling, IFC" to make a difference to particular family therapy. In BFF-project the work has been done through emphasizing the preventive element of IFC.

With the day care staff, especially the kindergarten teachers, we've helped them out in their work mainly through discussions about problems they have when, for example, parents of a family start to seem tired but don't talk about it (how to bring up the issue, what to offer to the family etc.) BFF-project's workers have also paid attention to the co-operation between different sectors, in this case especially social workers and day care workers. The workers have also visited both the university and the polytechnic and given the students information not just about the BFF-project but also about child welfare in general and preventive child welfare.

During these years we've noticed that the more the preventive element (especially in the context of child welfare) is emphasized, the closer to the "normal" one operates, the more one must pay attention to the point of "being present" for the parents. This way the parents get to know you better and start to trust you even though it usually takes more time than when working with a family who are in a crisis situation. We've also noticed that there are still things to improve in the co-operation and that is very useful to inform the future workers so that they would not meet the same problems which today's workers have to deal with.

website: http://www.nuorten-yst.fi/