INSOTE-project is connected to the ongoing wide-ranging reform of the Finnish healthcare and social service system. The goals of the project are:
- to promote the process of combining the expertise of healthcare and social welfare professionals with their clients’ expertise
- to develop multi-professional practices to encounter clients living under complex life situations
- to strengthen the client-oriented approach in service practices
- to analyse the formation of integrated working practices through the lenses of dialogue, participation, and spatiality
- to develop basis for a new organisational structure which promotes combining research, education and practice in the future health and social services centre
The research context of the INSOTE-project is the forthcoming university-based health and social services centre in Kauppi area in the city of Tampere, which belongs to the Pirkanmaa wellbeing services county (one of the 21 counties in Finland). Kauppi-Centre is currently being planned and different practices are piloted. Finnish new wellbeing counties start from the beginning of 2023, and the physical building for the Kauppi-Centre, which collects different services under the same roof, is expected to be ready in 2025.
Our research orientation is participative. We join in selected ongoing development processes as well as organise workshops and seminars for professionals who take part to the development work. We utilise and collect different types of research data, for example public planning documents, development-group and pilot-group meetings, group discussions in workshops, as well as professional and client interviews.
The development of integrated work is examined from multiple angles. On the one hand, we are interested in the general constructing process of health and social services centres but more specifically, we focus on three groups of clients who live under complex situations: (1) ex-prisoners who have recently been released from prison, (2) parents and children living in the middle of high-conflict divorce and child custody disputes, and (3) adults who have high amount of visits to different healthcare and social welfare services.