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1. Policy/legal framework

2. Funding

3. Cooperation

Policy/legal framework

The Youth Act, The Government Decree on Youth Work and Policy (211/2017) and the National Youth Work and Policy Programme sets out the guidelines for supporting youth work and related activities, including the key criteria for eligibility for state aid by national youth work centres of expertise pursuant to the Youth Act. The Ministry of Education and Culture is responsible of drafting all of those. For more information, see Youth Wiki/Finland 1.3 National Youth Strategy and Youth Wiki/Finland 1.2 National youth law. At the same time, it can be said that currently Finland doesn't have a youth work strategy as such. 

Funding

The Ministry of Education and Culture annually allocates government funding to the national youth organisations, municipal youth work, statutory bodies, and other actors doing youth work. The Ministry has additional appropriations for measures that address topical issues, such as young people's social empowerment, international projects, and new forms of youth work and youth culture. In 2023, the appropriations and budget items in the youth sector were 41.5 million euros for the promotion of youth work, 22.4 million euros for youth workshop activities and outreach youth work, and 13.7 million euros for the certain grants and central government transfers of youth services to the municipalities. However, according to the Finnish Government's General Government Fiscal Plan from April 2024, it was decided to make cuts to the budget of the Ministry of Education and Culture, which created a budget pressure worth 65 million euros from the grants for culture, science, sport and youth work. As the Finnish National Youth Council Allianssi states, if the grant cuts from the Ministry of Education and Culture were implemented in line with the former Lotteries Act, the youth sector would be affected by 9% of the cuts, which would be 13.5 million euros in 2026. According to Research Director Eila Kauppinen (Finnish Youth Research Society) and Executive Director Timo Kontio (Into ry), previous financial cuts are already having an effect across Finland in the form of resource shortages, especially in outreach work and workshops, and the future cuts could put a strain on youth work, in particular in smaller municipalities and organisations.

Cooperation

The most important framework for cooperation amongst all youth work stakeholders is the National Youth Work and Youth Policy Programme, which is a statutory, cross-sectoral programme adopted by the Finnish Government every four years. Since the end of 2017 there has also been a network of Youth Work Centres of Expertise established to support the implementation of the objectives set out in the programme by promoting competence, expertise, communications and networking in the youth sector in accordance with the Youth Act. For the years 2024-2027, there will be three Youth Work Centers of Expertise instead of the previous six. Read more in Youth Wiki/Finland 1.4 Youth policy decision-making.