Lecture room: Árnagarður – 101. Click for a map.
Working institution
Psychiatric nurse, Couple and family therapist, Couple and family therapy trainer
Oulunkaaren kuntayhtymä, Healt Center Simo, Lapland
Abstract
I am working in heath center in Simo with another psychiatric nurse who is also couple and family therapist. We started to co-operate with maternity and child health clinic nurse about six years ago and started to meet every family which had a newborn child. She had noticed that it was a special moment for a family. In Finland maternity and child health clinic had started meetings with children and their families a little bit earlier. A nurse and a doctor participated those meetings, but our co-operation partner thought that it was not enough. She asked if we could do that family meeting with her. We wanted to have a comprehensive conversation about familys situation. At the same time we wanted to offer early support for families if needed and market our services.
We noticed that it was easier for people to contact us and discuss about their problems. At the same time, nurse, who co-operated with us told that she learned a lot of those meetings. She also started to contact us more.
Spring 2015 we expanded those meetings to families which had 5 years old child. It is one year before preschool. In same concept we meet all families in this area. We don`t take only families with problems.
Next we have planned to expand to teenagers and their families. We asked teenagers and they said it could be a good moment for a meeting about one year before they graduate when they are 15 years old.
We think this all is preventive family therapy and it should be available fo all families in Finland.
In 2016 we got Finnish Family Therapy Assosiations ”Good Practice Recognition” for our work with families with children.