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1. Quality assurance

2. Research and evidence supporting youth work

3. Participative youth work

4. "Smart" youth work: youth work in the digital world

Quality assurance

In Finland youth work is statutory service, which is regulated by the law entitled the Youth Act. Based on that act, the responsibility for youth work rests with the local government (in Finland these local self-governing entities are called municipalities, see Glossary). They are, with due consideration to local conditions, obligated to create the necessary preconditions for local youth work and activities by providing services and premises for young people and by supporting their civic engagement. The Local Government Act, on the other hand, says that municipalities shall perform functions that they choose for themselves by virtue of their self-governing status and shall arrange the functions provided for them separately by law. What can be seen as a first step of quality assurance for local youth work, is that youth work, just as any other service, must have some specific targets relevant to the nature of the work. Moreover, the Local Government Act stipulates that the ‘municipality’s operating and financial targets shall be approved in the budget and financial plan.’

The local body responsible for assessing the extent to which the operating and financial targets set by the local council have been achieved in the municipality, is working under the council and referred to as the Local Authority Audit Committee. Both the Youth Act and the Local Government Act also recognise the active role the (young) citizen ought to have in service planning, but still young people are quite seldom heard in setting targets for youth work or in evaluations. This fact is also highlighted in the report (2020) of yearly realised nation-wide evaluations of basic services by the Regional State Administrative Agencies (see Glossary). Based on the Government Decree on Youth Work and Youth Policy, the regional state administrative agencies are responsible for assessing the adequacy, quality and accessibility of the services intended for young people. Because youth work is a statutory service, the youth work services are also evaluated by the regional agencies of the state. The main idea of these evaluations is to measure whether a Finnish citizen can have equal services regardless of where the person is living. The evaluations also monitor how and to what extent the municipalities are fulfilling their obligations (regarding youth work), as stated in the Youth Act, for example. The agencies choose which aspect of the evaluation they will concentrate on each year, while the latest report deals with the adequacy of the services. The next report will be published during the autumn 2024.

According to the latest report of the Regional State Administrative Agencies (2021), the adequacy of youth work services open to all young people were evaluated as being at quite a good level, as were the services of outreach youth work and youth workshops (see more of open youth work Youth Wiki/Finland 10. Overview Youth Work and about outreach youth work and youth workshops Youth Wiki/Finland 4.7 Youth work to foster social inclusion). The report provides area-specific and municipal-level details, indicating which areas have adequate services, as well as which areas are in need of improvement (see Finnish Youth Work Statistics). 

The results of the evaluation of the basic services are part of the basic public services programme procedure, which in turn belongs to the negotiation process between the central and local government and is part of the central government’s budget preparations. The results of the evaluation hopefully also have an impact on service planning at the local level within the municipalities. This service planning is supported by the personnel of Regional State Administrative Agencies who provide information guidance, and who also administer the state funding for youth work quality development projects at the local and regional level.

The statistical documentation system for municipal youth work, nuoDo, was published in February 2022, and has around 140 municipalities as users. The database collects information about the forms and methods used in the municipal youth work, the number of young people attending the activities and other relevant information. The Regional State Administrative Agencies are currently preparing to transfer the administration of nuoDo from the Association of Finnish Cities and Municipalities to their own data team to ensure free access and development of the service in the future. More information will be available at the beginning of the year 2025.

Previous Youth Work Centre of Expertise Cannon (Kanuuna) has facilitated the development of a nation-wide quality assurance package Kyllin hyvä together with Finnish Youth Research Society and municipalities, which was published in 2023. The package includes support for creating basic curriculum for youth work in various municipalities, survey materials targeting young people and other inhabitant groups, quality assessment criteria and quantitative indicators for data analysis. The objective is to help municipal youth work professionals to make their work visible, clarify their used objectives and evaluate their work both with qualitative and quantitative indicators. 

Research and evidence supporting youth work

As described at length in Youth Wiki/Finland 1.6 Evidence-based youth policy, there is a significant number of activities to be done to build up the knowledge base that underpins youth policy-making. When it comes to youth work especially, Finnish Youth Work statistics is a portal with national statistics on municipal youth work (the so-called “open youth work”), youth workshops and outreach youth work. One of offices of the Regional State Administrative Agencies administers the portal. The portal has been developed in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Culture.

According to the Youth Act, Youth Work Centres of Expertise are communities that develop and promote knowledge and expertise regarding youth nationwide. As described in the National Youth Work and Youth Policy Programme for the years 2024-2027, the centres will focus on promoting the wellbeing of young people through youth work and supporting the management of youth wellbeing work. According to the programme, “the activities of the centres of expertise will strengthen the understanding and awareness of youth sector actors and youth workers about factors affecting the wellbeing of young people, as well as the necessary skills, primarily through training and communication activities, but also through situation monitoring and, if necessary, surveys.” Youth Work Centres of Expertise nominated for the years 2024-2027 can be seen in Youth Wiki/Finland 1.4 Youth policy decision-making.

At the local level, according to the Youth Act, the coordinating body for cross-sectoral cooperation set by the local government is required to gather information on young people's growth and living conditions, and to distribute this information to decision-makers in order to broaden the database the decision-making processes are based on. (See more on research and evidence in Youth Wiki/Finland 1.6 Evidence-based youth policy).

Additionally, as set in National Youth Work and Youth Policy Programme for the years 2024-2027, youth work related information is also gathered by regional youth work coordinators, as reported in Youth Wiki/Finland 10.3 Support to youth work.

As reported in the following chapter (Youth Wiki/Finland 10.5 Youth Workers), Finnish higher education is comprised of universities and universities of applied sciences, many of which offer youth work related scientific studies. As such, there have been many youth work related theses over the years, also at a doctoral level. There are also two strong research institutions in the field: namely a scientific association called the Finnish Youth Research Society, and Juvenia – Youth Research and Development Centre, located in South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences.

Moreover, the bodies referred to as Youth Work Centres of Expertise have a strong role in producing and delivering the necessary information to the Ministry of Education and Culture. Latest publication about municipal youth work at a national level was published by the Finnish Youth Research Society in close cooperation with previous Youth Work Centre of Expertise Kanuuna in 2024. Poikkeusoloista uuden kynnykselle: Kunnallinen nuorisotyö Suomessa 2023 includes survey data from municipal youth work from the years 2021 and 2023 as well as peer-reviewed articles about school youth work (Kivijärvi, Kiilakoski & Kauppinen 2024), participation (Kiilakoski & Kauppinen 2024), equality in open youth work (Gretschel 2024) and the work-related wellbeing of youth work professionals (Rauas, Kiilakoski & Honkatukia 2024). The research results have shown that youth work in Finland plays an important role in supporting the wellbeing of young people: According to Kivijärvi and his colleagues (2024), schools that had invested in youth work had significantly less bullying than schools with no youth work at all. Antti Kivijärvi comments that achieving good results requires not only perseverance and adequate resources, but also effective multidisciplinary cooperation with other professionals working in schools.

Many NGOs working in the youth field are also producing evidence-based information. The Finnish National Youth Council Allianssi has participated in producing surveys on Finnish youth work done in the national, sub-local and local youth organisations (2021, in Finnish). Taloustutkimus Research Company implemented the latest survey about volunteer work in Finland (2021, in Finnish) on behalf of Citizen Forum. Many surveys made in the third sector are implemented with cooperation of various actors, such as the above mentioned scientific associations, youth work centres of expertise, NGOs and private companies.  

Participative youth work

Youth work as such is based on giving young people an active role in planning, realising and evaluating its activities. Youth Act reflects that in versatile ways. It states that young people must be given opportunities to take part in the handling of matters related to youth work and youth policy. At the national level, young people ‘are to be consulted in the course of preparation’ of the National Youth Work and Youth Policy Programme. Also, the Youth Act itself, like all legislation, is due to consultation processes whenever renewed. Youth Wiki/ Finland 5.4 Young people's participation in policy-making offers an in-depth description of such a consultation.

"Smart" youth work: youth work in the digital world

Finland has a long 40-year history of digital youth work, and nowadays it is broadly defined through three different dimensions: it is simultaneously an operating environment, an operating tool and a youth work method, as described by the former Center for Digital Youth Work Verke (see also European Commision 2018). As recognised in 2016 in the Proposal of the Finnish Government to Parliament regarding the content of the Youth Act (PG 111/2016), 'the digital world as an operating environment, which includes social media, has broadened and diversified the ways young in which people go for free-time activities, make impact, participate and communicate’. Therefore, instead of referring to digital youth work only as separate form of work, digitality is seen encompassing all of youth work.

Accelerating digital development and the increasing use of artificial intelligence has changed the operating environment of digital youth work. According to Heikki Lauha (Specialist, The Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra) the youth sector indeed needs new openings for discussion on the development of digital youth work, as well as the current needs of the sector and its prospects. He states that “involving young people in the debate on how to operate in digital environments is crucial, as digital development is also driven by many commercial interests that are not concerned with young people's well-being". According to him, the youth sector needs more meeting places for sharing good practices and having inclusive and multi-voiced debates about future guidelines, especially regarding the rapid development of AI (Read more in the blog text “How should we talk about the digital well-being of young people in the field of youth work?” by Essi Holopainen, Finnish Youth Research Society).

Digitalisation is often taken into account in official documents governing youth work as an issue affecting young people's leisure and free-time activities. One of the main objectives of the National Youth Work and Youth Policy Programme 2024–2027 is that “every young person can pursue a hobby of their choice at a low threshold”. The possibilities of digital technology have been recognised in the programme as following: “Young people’s use of digital devices continues to increase and is an important part of the everyday lives of many young people, for example through the use of services, studies, play, hobbies and community.” The programme aims to strengthen the young people’s “opportunities for meaningful leisure activities offered by the digital environment”, while “the importance and potential of digital communities and online services in promoting the wellbeing and inclusion of young people will be taken into account” (page 23). It also states that “digitally mediated youth work and recreational activities can also reach young people with different challenges or barriers to participation at a low threshold”, and “the development of digital youth work will be continued” (page 24). The Ministry of Education and Culture is coordinating the efforts related to this objective of the programme.

It has been estimated that the Covid-19 epidemic in Spring 2020 significantly changed the landscape of digital youth work. Although the restrictions are over, the popularity of digital youth work services has not decreased. According to the latest national data (2024) gathered from municipal youth work professionals and stakeholders, 83 % of the 293 municipalities were offering digital youth work when it was asked, when youth workers are using or dealing with digitality or technology in youth work, either in a physical or digital environment (see Finnish Youth Work Statistics). During pandemic restrictions in 2021 the popularity of digitally mediated youth work increased understandably, and in 2023 the digital platforms were still widely utilised especially in regional youth work, outreach youth work and in information providing services. On the other hand, the use of digitality was still low in 2023 in international youth work opportunities provided by the municipalities.

Due to the discontinuation of national funding, operations of Verke, the Center for Digital Youth Work, end in 2024. Verke has been developing and promoting digital youth work for over a decade and has produced a wide range of materials that have helped utilize and apply digital media and technology in youth work. According to one of their latest surveys ‘The Digitalisation in Municipal Youth Work 2021’ youth workers and youth work stakeholders in municipalities have a positive attitude towards digitalisation and the digital competence of youth workers had increased during the pandemic time. According to a similar survey on the field of youth organisations (2023), (read more in Finnish), various digital platforms are widely used in youth work organisations, and for some of them the youth work activities are naturally hybrid – operated both in the digital and face-to-face environments.

Besides the local services provided by municipalities or youth work organisations, there are several national-level digital youth work services. Several non-governmental organisations working at the national level are funded, for example, by the Ministry of Education and Culture for doing digital youth work, such as the Mannerheim League for Child Welfare, which is famous for its way of engaging young people when creating content for its online youth services, such as YouthNet (Nuortennetti.fi). In 2023, during the European Year of Youth, YouthNet won the award for the Best Youth Inclusion Model in Finland awarded by the Finnish National Agency for Education.

It is also worth noticing, that youth work organisations using online environments have also built their own self-regulating body called NUSUVEFO, meaning ‘Network of Practitioners Working with Online Services Aimed at Young People’ (about the network in Finnish). The network has been in use since 2007 and produced for example ethical principles and codes of accessibility, that facilitate the use of online services in practice. The network will now continue to operate under a rotating coordination responsibility, and the The Finnish Society on Media Education will be responsible for it until the end of 2024.