Lecture room: Lögberg – 201. Click for a map.
Working institution
Folkhälsans förbund & Pekka Aarninsalo’s private practice
Abstract
I Hackney, northwest London, a new way of doing social work in Children’s services was developed in 2007. The whole organization was organized according to systemic family therapy principles. The staff had education in a systemic approach and in the newly organized teams. In a national report 2011 and an evaluation research 2013 the outcome shows that the model has been successful in Hackney.
In Finland the Hackney model has become one of the peak projects of the Finish government to develop child protection services in Finland. The most important aim is to organize the work load in a way that the social workers spend more time with the families instead of concentrating on bureaucratic procedures. The social workers develop their skills to improve the quality of their contact with the families.
In autumn 2016 we, Katarina Fagerström and Pekka Aarninsalo, had the opportunity to pilot the model in the municipality of Mäntsälä in southern Finland. We arranged a training in systemic family therapy applied in child protection in children’s services. Among other things social workers learned to use genograms, rewrite family stories and work out positive visions of the future, based on strengths in the family.
In the workshop we will describe the model and talk about how training and supervision has supported social workers in child protection services to see the children as part of their families and larger networks, the dynamics and possibilities in the families. The social workers work systemically and therapeutically with their clients, even though they do not become therapists. Their work is still statuary social work, with the difficult balance between control and support.