INTERCULTURAL FAMILIES IN CHILD WELFARE: perspectives from service users on Finnish child welfare services.
Ruh, Bernard; Still-Malek, Saara (2023)
2023
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202304195577
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202304195577
Tiivistelmä
Finnish child welfare services must adjust to the new demographic landscape of their clients. The ever-growing number of intercultural families have unique features and needs child welfare services are legally required to meet. The aim of this thesis was to find out how intercultural families should be met in child welfare social work from the perspective of the client. Previous done research informs about the potential issues intercultural clients are facing and a survey questionnaire reflecting these was used as a tool to obtain the data. The questions also examined what kind of professional competencies the clients feel that the child welfare professionals should have when working with culturally and linguistically
diverse families.
The survey questionnaire was conducted in cooperation with the work-life partner Familia ry - a leading expert organisation of intercultural families and distributed through their network such as social media followers. The survey had both openand close-ended questions.
The survey was filled by 35 respondents over an 8-week period from which 19 had identified as clients of child welfare services. The analysis methods used were descriptive statistics and content analysis. The results clearly indicate the insufficient interpretation into the mother tongue of the client, and the lack of intercultural competences on behalf of the child welfare professionals. The results also show records of preferential treatment for family members whose mother tongue is Finnish or Swedish.
Conversely, the results suggest improvements on the identified issues explicitly the need for more culturally sensitive skills and anti-discriminatory practices by professional but also interpreter services which reflect the multiple mother tongues spoken within families.
Keywords: Intercultural, Multicultural social work, Quantitative research, Competences in child welfare, Ethical issues in child welfare, Intercultural communication
diverse families.
The survey questionnaire was conducted in cooperation with the work-life partner Familia ry - a leading expert organisation of intercultural families and distributed through their network such as social media followers. The survey had both openand close-ended questions.
The survey was filled by 35 respondents over an 8-week period from which 19 had identified as clients of child welfare services. The analysis methods used were descriptive statistics and content analysis. The results clearly indicate the insufficient interpretation into the mother tongue of the client, and the lack of intercultural competences on behalf of the child welfare professionals. The results also show records of preferential treatment for family members whose mother tongue is Finnish or Swedish.
Conversely, the results suggest improvements on the identified issues explicitly the need for more culturally sensitive skills and anti-discriminatory practices by professional but also interpreter services which reflect the multiple mother tongues spoken within families.
Keywords: Intercultural, Multicultural social work, Quantitative research, Competences in child welfare, Ethical issues in child welfare, Intercultural communication