SOS Children’s Villages Finland and partner cities · Non-profit and public sector
Child welfare from reactive to proactive
A research-based redesign of a service system. The results were presented at the OECD Forum in Paris, and the project won two awards.
Starting point
Child welfare often works reactively. Help arrives only once a problem exists and the law obliges action. As a family’s situation escalates, several agencies become involved in the same child’s life without knowing about each other. Costs grow, and nobody owns the whole.
The question was whether the authorities could become proactive and target support at the right moment, before the harm is done.
What we did
The project involved extensive research. Together with the city, the team modelled from data how a child welfare case begins and how it escalates. In parallel, N4C’s Jonna Heliskoski studied the use of support services for families with children and modelled their impact.
Based on the results, N4C helped SOS Children’s Villages and its partner cities launch a systematic redesign of the service system.
Result
The work produced a business case for society: a proactive way of working leads to happier families and lower costs. savings estimate to be verified
The project gained wide attention in the media, among municipal decision-makers, in key institutions and in academic research. The results were presented at the OECD Forum in Paris in 2016. The project was named Arvoteko of the Year 2016 and Child Welfare Act of the Year 2017.
