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1. Historical developments

2. National definition or understanding of youth work

Historical developments

Based on an article published in The history of youth work in Europe (Volume 4) by Juha Nieminen, Professor of Youth Studies and Youth Work at the University of Tampere, the ‘modern youth work’ can be considered to have started in Finland at the end of the 19th century. According to Nieminen, at that time, youth work was usually done voluntarily, on a philanthropic basis, often by already existing occupational groups such as teachers, priests and officers. The first youth workers were employed by youth organisations, later also by municipalities, to organise voluntary-based youth work. Church organisations and the temperance movement also had employees who did youth work as a part of their job. There was no statutory financing system allotted for youth work but rather there have been incidental state grants for youth organisations in general since the 1890s. (Nieminen 2014, 35-44.)

The professionalisation of Finnish youth work gained momentum since the 1940s, as Nieminen describes. After World War II, the state and public authorities took care of many aspects of social life, even though youth work was still mostly realised by both paid and voluntary practitioners outside of state and municipalities (see Glossary). According to Nieminen: ‘Youth work was increasingly differentiated as a field in its own right, various occupational interest groups emerged, higher education for youth workers was developed, legislation concerning youth work was enacted and scientific research on youth work increased.’ During the 1980s, municipal youth work obtained permission to arrange youth activities also independently of voluntary youth organisations. Youth houses were the main resources for municipalities to arrange youth activities themselves. (Nieminen 2014, 35-44.)

More lately, there has also been a development sphere into the digitalisation around youth work. The aim is for the ‘digitalisation [is] to be gradually more and more understood not only as a media in Finnish youth work but also as content, culture and operating environment’, as Verke - the National Centre of Expertise for Digital Youth Work in Finland, has described. For more information about digital youth work in Finland, see Youth Wiki/Finland 10.4 Quality and innovation in youth work. 

National definition or understanding of youth work

Youth work

The Youth Act and the Government Decree on Youth Work and Youth Policy (in Finnish, also available in Swedish) form the base of legal framework of youth work in Finland. According to the Youth Act, youth work means the efforts to support the growth, independence and social inclusion of young people in society. Also, according to the Non-Discrimination Act (in Finnish, also available in Swedish), the authorities evaluate the realisation of equality in their activities and take the necessary measures to promote the realisation of equality. This means that municipalities (see Glossary) must promote equality in services, including youth work. According to legislation, municipalities are responsible for the equality mapping of their services, but since the legislation came into effect in 2015, not all municipalities have implemented the task yet. 

Since the beginning of the year 2017 the latest Youth Act has been put into force. One of the differences from the earlier is that it no longer includes a list of the forms of youth work which should be available at the local level but refers to the responsibility of local authorities to consider the content based on the local need. Furthermore, the list included in the government proposal (PG 111/2016/Proposal of the Finnish Government to Parliament as regards the content of the Youth Act, in Finnish) related to the preparation of the updated Act describes what the content of youth work can be and traditionally has also been in Finland: educational guidance for young people; facilities and hobby opportunities; youth information and counselling; support for youth associations and other youth groups; sport-related, cultural, international and multicultural youth activities; young people's environmental education, youth workshop services and outreach youth work. 

Outreach youth work

The legislation on outreach youth work entered into force in January 2011. According to the definition of outreach youth work provided by the amended Youth Act, the purpose of outreach youth services is "to reach young people in need of assistance and provide access to services and other support designed to promote their growth, independence, social inclusion and life management skills as well as to improve access to education and facilitate entry into the labour market." In this sense, the definition of outreach youth work in the Finnish context corresponds to the definition of targeted youth work. The consortium administered by Into – Association for Outreach Youth Work and Workshop Activities is also one of the Youth Work Centre of Expertise approved by the Ministry of Education and Culture for the years 2020-2023. Consult the YouthWiki/Finland 1.4 Youth Policy Decision-Making for more information on the Centres of Expertise.

Youth workshops

‘Workshops in Finland are communities that aim to support the participants’ everyday life management, social empowerment, and employability skills, and thus, promote their access to education and work.’ This definition was borrowed from the report (p. 34) of the Erasmus+ funded development project “Paving the way to formal Education”, where Finnish youth workshops co-operated with their colleagues from Austria, Denmark, France, Germany and Slovenia. Although professionals doing roughly the same work in other European countries refer to such youth organisations as “production schools”, Finns have chosen to use the English word ‘workshop’.