Kotouttava ja ohjaava ote pakolaisperhetyössä

The purpose of this Bachelor’s thesis was to study the child welfare family work done with refugee families by the Jyvaskyla City Immigrant Services. The thesis was commissioned by the Jyvaskyla City Immigrant Services. The aim of this thesis was to find out what kind of family work was done with refugee families, what supported successful family work, what kind of special features there were in refugee family work and what the challenges in it were. The aim was also to find out how integration to Finnish way of life and encountering people from different cultures was reflected in family work. The study was carried out by interviewing three family workers and three social workers and by using the theme interview method. There were three interviews altogether. The data were analyzed by using content analysis. Based on the interviews, refugee family work seemed to be very similar to working with Finnish families, but the clients’ different cultural background and being a refugee made it special. Factors that support the success of family work are early intervention, client involvement, clear information about child welfare and multi-professional cooperation. The greatest challenge concerning family work was opening the concept of the Finnish child welfare system to a client who came from a different culture and had a different native language. In addition, working with interpreters and families with multiple problems were mentioned as challenges. Moreover, the same difficulties seemed to trouble refugee families as other families, such as the lack of commitment to the welfare work process or a negative attitude towards child welfare. The interviewees raised a need to develop early stage support, multi-professional cooperation and peer-support groups for immigrants. Developing family work with the focus on cultural intergration to respond to the needs of the client families was seen important in a multicultural society.