We want Finland to be the world’s child-friendliest country. Finland must continue to be a safe place in which to grow up. Finland’s policies have been successful in many respects. Our child mortality is low and all children have the subjective right to day care. To increase child wellbeing, we also want to ensure every child’s right to at least one hobby.
We want to increase support for families with children by investing in pre-emptive work. Child impact assessments must be used as tools in decision-making. We also want to continue with child budgeting in order to promote the children’s rights.
The child protection situation must be improved. A shortage of personnel and way too many clients per employee have led to an unsustainable situation in many parts of the country.
WE WANT
- to extend the child welfare clinic service until the age of 10 years
- to secure sufficient resources for child protection
- to see better cross-sector collaboration between the authorities (school, early childhood education, social services, police force, etc.) to ensure children’s best interests can be protected
- to have the Finnish model for free extracurricular leisure activities adopted in all municipalities
- to ensure school playgrounds and buildings are also accessible outside of school hours
- to make things easier for single-parent households by scrapping the link between income support and the single-parent child benefit supplement
- to investigate the opportunity of allowing grandparents or other close persons of working age to take paid childcare leave on the same terms as a child’s parents
- to ensure child impact assessments are used as tools in decision-making
