Back to the future: Social investments in children pay

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In Finland, municipalities produce the lion’s share of services targeted at children. However, municipal budgets have been in deficit for more than a decade. Municipalities solve their budgetary problems in a very pragmatic way: they concentrate on the measures they absolutely must take care of. Their spending is then geared towards “heavy” services (e.g. child protection measures, including taking children into custody or placing them into foster homes) to the detriment of lighter ones, such as home help and other support for families.

The emphasis in political discourse is now changing in favour of social investments and pro-active measures. By investing in home help and family services, a number of municipalities have been able to simultaneously cut down expenditure and enhance social investment. The “innovation” is in fact a move “back to the future” – a move back to 2-3 decades ago when municipalities used to offer home help services to families with children.

Authors: Olli Kangas & Laura Kalliomaa-Puha