THE PORVOO FAMILY CENTRE
“The family centre is a set of services that include support and care services promoting the welfare, health, growth and development of children and families as well as early support and care measures.”
The planning of the Porvoo family centre (Porvoon Perhekeskus) began in the Programme to address child and family services (2016–2018). The family centre’s first unit was established in the Gammelbacka neighbourhood in March 2018. The Gammelbacka unit serves around 10,000 inhabitants.
The Porvoo family centre
The opening of the Porvoo family centre was celebrated in Tehtaankatu in February 2019. The family centre comprises the family centre building, which includes the operations of a maternity and child health clinic, family work, home services, a family counselling clinic, the Eastern Uusimaa Family Law Unit, services provided under the Social Welfare Act, and child welfare, case management and counselling services. The Mannerheim League for Child Welfare (MLL) is also involved. In the family centre network, we operate in cooperation with other units providing services for families with children as well as the entire city's units, including education, cultural, and recreational services, other social and health care units, and specialised medical care. The local organisations and congregation also increasingly operate as our partners.
Management of the family centre
At the strategic level, the family centre is steered by the multidisciplinary steering group created in the Programme to address child and family services. The management group for child and family services, which is part of social and health care services, is in charge of operative leadership. The family centre is managed by the service director of child and family services. The centre has around 130 employees. The services of the family centre are aimed at all children, young people as well as parents and families in Porvoo. The centre covers around 50,000 members of the population. The development of the third unit of the Porvoo family centre in ongoing in the Kevätkumpu neighbourhood.
The aim of the family centre is to strengthen the availability, effectiveness and performance of customer- oriented services for children, young people and families. A key goal is to create a low-threshold family centre where children, young people and families can receive several different services from a single physical location or network. At the heart of these services lie prevention, early support, and strengthening multiprofessional work as well as versatile services, including digital services and services produced by organisations. We aim at strengthening resources, a sense of being encountered and involvement in families, providing faster access to help, and coordinating the activities better than before.
Preventive services at the family centre
Nearly all families with children use the preventive services offered by the family centre, beginning during pregnancy. The purpose of the services is to promote welfare and health by supporting the healthy and safe growth and development of children and parents. The services also have the task of identifying potential risk factors before the onset of symptoms, recognising challenges and symptoms as early as possible, giving support and treatment to those families, who need them, and referring them to care and support services. In 2019, there were in total 421 deliveries at the maternity clinic. People visit the
maternity clinic 9–11 times during each pregnancy; two of the visits take place at the customer’s home. The child health clinic services covered around 4,000 children aged 0–6 and their parents. Children visit the child health clinic 10 times before the age of 1 and 6 times in ages 1–6.
School and student health care services cover 10,000 pupils. The services involve meeting each pupil once per year. In its new service, the contraception counselling clinic provides birth control free of charge to under-25-year-olds. Children’s medical rehabilitation services are annually visited by around 800 under- school-aged children and their families. These services include support provided by speech therapists, occupational therapists and psychologists.
Early support services at the family centre
The early support services of the family centre include social work, family work and home services aimed at families with children, a family counselling clinic, and the Eastern Uusimaa Family Law Unit. Some numbers from the early support services in 2018: 1,213 contacts with the social work for families with children, 443 completed social welfare service assessments, 104 families with children provided with the home service,
329 families with children provided with supplementary and preventive social assistance, and 592 agreements concluded for child custody and right of access.
Child welfare services at the family centre
The family centre holds one corrective service unit, child welfare services. The child welfare services work with children, young people and families living in challenging situations. Around 70 children have been placed outside their homes by the child welfare services in Porvoo. In addition, 250 clients, including children subject to family work measures, receive open child welfare services each year. The number of new child welfare clients has dropped in recent years as the number of clients in early support services has increased. In the past year, the systemic child protection approach model from Hackney, London, has been developed in the social work for child welfare.
Support for parents and families
The activities by the family centre are primarily organised as reception activities, which involve the units meeting children, young people and parents together and separately, at appointments or people’s homes.
The centre’s group activities include family counselling at a maternity clinic for all families expecting their first child, strength in parenting groups for families that have had their first child, a parenting counselling group clinic for families with children aged 6 months and two years, the Incredible Years and Blended Family groups of the family counselling clinic, and the Voi kukkia group of the child welfare services.
Multiprofessional cooperation is carried out by developing increasingly well-functioning customer
processes, e.g. the case management and counselling process, and preventive home service free of charge for families with children under the age of one (1). Multiprofessional cooperation also takes place at the preventive home visits by the maternity and child health clinic, rehabilitation working groups of children and pupils, pupil welfare groups at schools, at doctor’s appointments at child health clinics and in student health care, service needs assessments, multiprofessional group activities, and a lecture series aiming to support relationships implemented at an adult education centre. The family centre has strengthened collaboration and consultation between professional groups.
