Search results for "ELFA"
showing 10 items of 952 documents
Social service professionals in Finland under the pressures of a depressed economy and European integration
1993
The Nordic welfare states are known as women-friendly. However, during the last years their policies have been to turn the back on women. At least in Finland there seem to exist two powerful forces that have advanced the non-egalitarian development: the economic recession of the 1990s and the integration of Europe. The decline of the Nordic welfare states is going to have considerable consequences for social service professionals, the great majority of whom are women. Therefore, they should create new strategies and find new allies in order to defend their own as well their clients rights.
Finnish vocational education and training in comparison: Strengths and weaknesses
2014
International journal for research in vocational education and training 1 (2014) 2, S. 81-106
Care poverty : unmet care needs in a Nordic welfare state
2019
This article introduces the concept of care poverty, defined as inadequate coverage of care needs resulting from an interplay between individual and societal factors, and examines its level and predictors among the 75+ population in Finland. The data come from a survey conducted in 2010 and 2015. Despite the universalistic goals of the Finnish care system, 26 percent of respondents with limitations in daily activities faced care poverty with regard to instrumental activities of daily living; the activities of daily living care poverty rate was 17 percent. Concerning instrumental activities of daily living, care poverty was associated with income level, health status and living arrangements,…
How perceptions of immigrants trigger feelings of economic and cultural threats in two welfare states
2017
Better understanding of attitudes toward immigration is crucial to avoid misperception of immigration in the public debate. Through two identical online survey experiments applying morphed faces of non-Western immigrants and textual vignettes, the authors manipulate complexion, education, family background, and gender in Denmark and Germany. For women, an additional split in which half of the women wore a headscarf is performed. In both countries, highly skilled immigrants are preferred to low-skilled immigrants. Danes are more skeptical toward non-Western immigration than Germans. Essentially, less educated Danes are very critical of accepting non-Western immigrants in their country. It i…
Defamilisation, Dedomestication and Care Policy: Comparing Childcare Service Provisions of Welfare States
2011
PurposeThis paper aims to use perspectives from both mainstream and feminist welfare state research in drafting a conceptual approach for social care research. This approach is then applied empirically to a comparative analysis of childcare provisions of 15 OECD countries.Design/methodology/approachThe concept of dedomestication is developed from a discussion on the notions of decommodification and defamilisation, and it is defined as the degree to which social care policies make it possible for people to participate in society and social life outside their homes and families. In the empirical part of the paper, dedomestication of childcare service provisions of 15 welfare states is measure…
Third Sector, Social Enterprises and Local Authorities in a EU Candidate Country. The Case of Albania
2013
The paper is based on evidence offered by survey data collected through a structured questionnaire in a long range survey launched in July 2012 by the Steering Group of ASE Forum. The aim of the study was to reveal the trend, status, profile, features and the role of potentials enterprises in Albania in supporting welfare and wellbeing in synergy with the local authorities.After an appropriate methodological introduction, the paper reports main statistical evidence concerning the Third sector in Albania and the direct survey outcomes about the features and the activity of the organizations interviewed.Conclusions will be driven by data analysis and will be focused on the needs, limits and o…
The Relationships Between Local and National Childcare Policies – A Comparison of Nordic and Southern European Cities
2015
We start by comparing the childcare systems in the 11 European cities, looking particularly at whether the childcare provision in these cities follows national provision levels or not. We then focus on analyzing the relationships between local and national childcare policies in four European cities: Bologna (Italy) and Terrassa (Spain) from Southern Europe, and Jyvaskyla (Finland) and Aalborg (Denmark) from the Nordic countries. The availability and use of childcare services are analyzed, as are other factors influencing the possibilities and obstacles of labour market participation for mothers with young children. The aim of this analysis is to demonstrate the significance of local welfare…
The effectiveness of rural versus urban nonprofit organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo
2017
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a country with high natural resources, but it has suffered from decades of civil wars and social turmoil, being heavily aid-dependent. In the DRC, several Nonprofit Organisations (NPOs) are major players in fighting poverty and enhancing welfare. This research aims to analyse the effectiveness of small NPOs in improving poor peoples’ lives through health, education, and economic activities. Two NPOs working in the DRC, one in a rural and the other in an urban area, are compared by researching the aid sites and surveying 201 households (aid beneficiaries). Our case observations and the survey results facilitate analysing the mission accomplishment, e…
‘We Are a Training and Development Organisation’ – Research and Development in Finnish Polytechnics
2010
This chapter discusses the research mission of the polytechnic sector in Finland. According to the Finnish Ministry of Education, polytechnics have already become essential actors in the regional innovation system, but they should enhance their regional impact with measures taken to develop the structure of education provision, to combine polytechnics’ regional development projects into larger entities linking different sectors, and to boost networking with different stakeholders, higher education institutions and schools. Polytechnics’ contacts with the world of work have also improved significantly with the aim of evolving into development processes, which benefit all the partners involve…
Citizens' participation and community orientation – indicators of social sustainability of rural welfare services
2011
The article discusses the issues of social services in rural areas from a theoretical view point of sustainability paradigms of social work. The ecological crisis existing beyond the ongoing global economic crisis is not separated from the increasing urbanization and weakening perspectives in rural areas. The paper is based on results from a participatory action research project in Finland, which aims at strengthening social service provision in rural areas through citizens' participation and community-orientation. The neoliberal politics of centralization, marketization and privatization are heavily transforming rural regions also in the Nordic welfare states right now. The debates in the …