USING SOCIAL MEDIA IN DAILY WORK

MY JOB

I work as a supervisor in a foster care unit where 7 children or young people under the age of 18. For some reason, the children cannot live with their own parents, in which case they are placed in a foster care unit. The investment can last from a few months to several years.

Working aims at rehabilitative everyday life and attachment relationships, genuine listening and presence. The work is always goal-oriented, and the progress of the goals is monitored in close cooperation with the child, the family and the network. In the unit, children and young people may have psychological, neuropsychiatric, behavioral and school attendance challenges. The unit’s ideology is to implement multiprofessional teamwork so that the unit can offer children and young people high-quality foster care services. Rehabilitative everyday life is supported by self-counselors, a psychiatric nurse and neuropsychiatric coaches. The unit is staffed by counselors who are trained nurses, community nurses, social workers, and community therapists.

The counselors’ tasks include supporting the growth and development of children and young people, supporting school attendance, everyday support, supporting family communication, and working as self-counselors.

The supervisor’s duties include supporting instructors, ensuring the smooth running of everyday life, written and administrative tasks such as shift planning, monthly reports, care and making education plans and much more.

In addition, important tasks include networking with different networks, for example schools, social workers, child psychiatry, youth psychiatry, and parents.

DIGITAL TOOLS AT MY WORK

In my work, I can use little social media tools, but I highlight the digital tools that are used in my work.

as a digital customer information system, we use the Nappula customer information system, where we record daily records of the child’s daily life, contact with networks. In addition, the customer information system contains restriction measures, monthly reports and care and education plans. In addition, the customer information system has medications and allergies, as well as parents’ contact information.

We also use the work shift wizard, which is a tool for monitoring the employees’ working hours, and through it we plan the shift lists.

Supervisors use the procountor application, which is a tool to support accounting. Through the application, we describe and record the expenses incurred by the company. Receipts are photographed through the application, from where they are transferred to the accountant.

In my work, I use the Instagram website, where we photograph the everyday life of the unit, considering that the names or pictures of children and young people are not visible and recognizable. On Instagram, we can spread information about the day-to-day life of the foster care unit to the children’s parents and relatives, as well as spread a positive image of the foster care unit’s activities to the followers anonymously.

DIGITAL TOOLS THAT I CAN USE IN MY WORK

Skype:

Skype is a tool with which we could be in contact with the parents of placed children or young people more actively. Usually, children and young people are placed far away from their parents, so communication takes place a lot by phone.

However, one important task of child protection and foster care is to evaluate the interaction between a child or a young person and a parent and to support interaction challenges. Using Skype, the distance would not be an obstacle, because the phone can sometimes have challenges in supporting interaction.

Facebook:

Facebook is a channel that can be used to improve the reputation of child protection on a general level, like Instagram. Instagram may reach young people better, while Facebook could be better for adults and especially parents in terms of target group.

TikTok:

Tik tok is a social media hit that young people prefer. I raise tik tok as the best and most effective channel where the reputation, transparency and quality of child protection could be brought out the best.

Pinterest:

We use a lot of methods in foster care and do tasks with children and young people. On Pinterest, I found a lot more material to support working, for example, to support neuropsychiatric features and challenges for nurses and self-advisers.

Snapchat:

Snapcahat is a more foreign application to me, but in my work we could use it from the point of view of influence and by spreading a message of good will about themes related to society through the means of influence.

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE ASPECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media certainly receives a lot of criticism, and especially in recent years, mental health problems among children and young people have caused concern, which are said to have increased due to the pressure brought by social media. I am signing this with my own work, which I have noticed with hundreds of young people in my own work. Social media should be more controlled among children and young people. On the positive side, I bring, for example, important social media tools, which, for example, Sekas chats and Chillaa apps bring. In addition, healthcare professionals who want to make an impact among young people through the social media platforms that young people prefer are great.

SELF-ASSESSMENT

Part of the task was difficult, because in the field of child protection it is extremely important to protect the identity of children and young people, and I set out to do the task from the point of view of how we can take advantage of changing the reputation of child protection to a more positive one through social media. However, spreading it is one important task in the field of child protection. For example, the children who live in our unit experience and hear a lot of negative things at school, for example, about living in a foster care unit. However, it is home for them and most of them enjoy themselves there. With our customers, the use of social media is less and the possibilities of using it as a tool are limited.

Perhaps also one important lesson was that social media can also give a lot of wisdom and information sharing and is not always a negative factor.

The task also helped me to notice that it is not always necessary to use social media channels to concretely interact and exchange information, but for example on Pinterest you can share information and know-how through different materials. I hadn’t thought of this as a social media tool before.