Social Services
I have worked in social services for almost ten years. My backround is in healthcare and it has been eye-opening to learn about social services. There is a huge amount in common – but also an astonishing number of differences. Language and terminology can also be almost contradictory, which certainly poses a challenge to working together.
The coming historic major strutural change will challenge the players. Can we really talk about social and health services? Does the other more weight in both speeches and activities?
Documentation and laws
As a service system developer, you always come across documentation. It is perceived as both an obligation, a burden and a right. Documentation and laws can be a barrier to the best services.
We professionals are a very law-abiding people and we want to do our job 100% in accordance with the law here in Finland. We understand our responsibilities and obligations with respect to laws and documentation.
But why is our service system built like this? Why can’t documentation practices be completely open to customers as well, because it’s their own business and their lives? Digitalization would certainly make this possible, but we believe that our laws, privacy, rights and pracitices prevent us from helping and serving our customers in the best possible way at the moment. Fortunately there are already a variety of applications where this has been realized, but it still takes years of working together to make this a daily routine for future generations.
Measuring effectiveness
It is easy to show the customer the effectiveness of the service in healthcare. Take a blood test when you enter the service and detect the disease. The doctor will prescribe the medicine and after the mdication a blood test will be taken again. The service either helped or did not help, and if still necessary, theys will try new medication.
But how about social services? The need for human support is regognized, he is directed somwhere through our services. He may be offered various forms of support from which he either benefits or does not benefit, but how is it measured? What has been the effectiveness of that service and that change has again been due to other factors? When it comes to a person’s life, the effectiveness of social services is still very much in the child’s shoes.
We have various applications in which a person can make self-assessments or be referred to different services, but it is not yet possible to measure the effectiveness of one social service. We’ve sat in workshops with several different application developers and considered different tools of measuring effectiveness. We speak a completely different language and do not really understand each other. It takes a huge amount of work together to move forward on even the smallest things – which is why I belive it will take years to get the finish line in this area.
Customer involvement
I hope that in the future, clients will also be able to participate fully in their own social services. Everything should be completely transparent and open as it is about their lives. They should have infomation about them documentation through the app, and they could either show it to professionals or not show it if they wanted to. It would be either an advantage or a disadvantage to provide the right social service, but it would be up to the invidual to decide. I mean, of course, adult citizens.