10.7 Raising awareness about youth work
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Information providers
Public authorities at the national, regional and local levels share information about youth work as part of their statutory duties, according to the Youth Act. According to the National Youth Work and Youth Policy Programme 2024-2027, regional coordinators cooperate with the Regional State Administrative Agencies and “promote regional cooperation, support youth work expertise in their region, develop the quality of youth work and communicate about the activities of the sector. They bring together regional cooperation networks and organise meetings and events. The tasks of regional coordination are carried out in youth workshop activities, outreach youth work and basic youth work.”
Due to the changes in the Youth Work Centres of Expertise in 2024, the coordination responsibilities regarding information providing are in transition as well.
Previously, the Youth Work Centre of Expertise Koordinaatti (2020-2023, originally since 2006) offered training for youth work professionals in youth information and counselling related to youth work and youth policy, by creating collaborative projects and trainings, and by publishing and offering a platform for the dissemination of different kinds of materials, both locally and at the national and European levels. Koordinaatti’s cooperation partners in Finland were different ministries, the Youth Work Centres of Expertise, regional actors and networks as well as national youth organisations municipalities and educational institutions. International collaborators were, for example, ERYICA - the European Youth Information and Counselling Agency, the Nordic-Baltic network for youth information and counselling, and the USE-IT network. According to Koordinaatti’s previous Head of Development Jaana Fedotoff, the end of the Youth Work Centre of Expertise period also shut down its networks and dissemination platforms, and left Finland out of ERYICA’s member countries and the Nordic-Baltic network.
The Finnish National Youth Council Allianssi is a national service and advocacy organisation for the youth sector. They are a lobbying organisation with no political or religious affiliation, and their membership consists of over 140 national youth and education sector organisations. They advocate for the well-being of young people and for sufficient resources for the youth sector, implement campaigns, train and bring together the actors and professionals of youth sector and provide information for various audiences. They annually host the YOUTH – National Days of Youth Work seminar, where the winner of the National Youth Work Award is also announced (read more in Youth Wiki/Finland 10.8 Current debates and reforms)
The Association for Municipal Youth Work (Kunnallisen nuorisotyön yhdistys ry, non-official English translation) has been established at the end of 2023 to advocate for municipal youth work and take the coordination duties of previous Youth Work Centre of Expertise Kanuuna (also operated as Municipal Youth Work Development Network Kanuuna (Cannon)). Currently the association has 21 municipalities as members, including the cities of Tampere, Espoo, Jyväskylä, Lappeenranta and Oulu. The Association for Municipal Youth Work aims to promote the role of municipal youth work and continue the development of professional youth work and its competences both nationally and internationally.
Key initiatives
In Finland the key initiatives in terms of raising awareness about youth work lie more at the strategical level, because it has the status of a statutory service and its nation-wide availability is assessed by the Regional State Administration Agencies (see Glossary). To exemplify some recent development related to awareness raising about youth work, here are two examples — both of which are discussed below in more detail:
As researcher Tomi Kiilakoski argues in Youth Work Education in Finland published by Finnish Youth Research Society and Youth Research Network, one of the most popular current topics of youth work is increased multi-professional co-operation. According to Kiilakoski, what is important is that youth work is mentioned in the national core curriculum of Finland as a potential partner to schools. The curriculum also emphasises youth participation, children’s rights and the importance of connecting schools to non-formal learning, which creates good opportunities for youth work to be a part of multi-professional teams in schools (National Agency of Education 2014). Youth work is also included in multi-professional networks in the field of social inclusion, child welfare and policy, employment, counselling for young people outside education and labour markets and crime prevention, to name only a few, Kiilakoski wrote. Youth workers and representatives of the youth work administration from local authorities also usually have an active role in running the coordination body for multi-professional co-operation.