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Public sectors’, predominantly female areas of work are still poorly financially compensated. With the inflation accelerating purchasing power gets weaker, and more and more nurses or early education teachers are worrying how to pay all the bills and feed their families. These societally crucial and priceless areas of work should be appreciated also financially, and salaries should be raised significantly. There’s a serious shortage of staff in the fields of healthcare and early education, it’s difficult to find temporary workers and the existing staff is exhausted. The workload should be humane to improve the job satisfaction and enable the staff to develop their own work.
Households’ purchasing power should be improved and getting into debt should be controlled by regulating the raise of prices of food, electricity and fuel. More assisting staff should be hired in the fields of healthcare and early education in order to assure that each professional can focus on work corresponding to their education. The smallest pensions should be raised.
The well-being of children and adolescents has weakened and problems in families have increased. There are more than 17 000 children placed to live away from their parents and approximately 65 000 – 70 000 children’s parents have a serious substance abuse problem. Psychological symptoms start often already in the early childhood or school age, but are often not recognized or help and support is not available. There is an urgent need to invest in low threshold services for families and welfare services at schools, which will, in the long run, be a fruitful investment. Children, adolescents and families need low threshold services, which are available in the areas where people live as well as easy to access.
Many neurological disorders, such as ADHD or forms of autism spectrum, are common in the population. Children with these disorders struggle to get the support they need in early education and schools, and then the situation may appear as behavioural issues, underachievement at school, substance abuse of vandalism. Children and adolescents should receive the support needed without any delays.
Street gangs of children and adolescents are a problem, especially in the capitol region. Meaningful free time activities should be provided to adolescents, as well as a caring and safe adult who to turn to. Empowering and personalised student counselling should be invested in, especially in primary schools and secondary schools.
Livelihood of the students should be guaranteed in order to enable them to focus on their main duty, which is completing their studies and entering the labour market. Government should support students in ways that are not based on debt. Covid-19 decreased also higher education students’ well-being. Some of the got mentally ill, many felt lonely and isolated. Accelerating inflation makes also students’ life difficult. Children and adolescents are the future of Finland. Their well-being should be the number one priority.
Mental health problems have increased in the whole population, especially within adolescents. Queues to receive treatment are very long, especially in Pirkanmaa, and people have to wait inhumanely long times. Covid-19 has increased mental health problems within the youth. Alcohol use has decreased, but cannabis use has increased significantly.
Mental health problems have also increased within the working age population. Mental health problems are the most common reason for early retirement and disability pension in Finland. In addition, mental health and substance abuse problems have increased within the elderly population. Each year in Finland approximately 800 suicides are committed, and Finland has the highest number of young adults dying in drug overdose in the whole Europe.
It is difficult to access psychotherapy, therapy is expensive, and availability of therapists is limited in some areas. Longterm inpatient rehabilitation for severe substance abuse problems is hardly available. People suffering from mental health and substance abuse problems from negative attitudes from the society and sometimes even healthcare professionals, which causes shame and makes it even more difficult to seek help.
In the future low threshold services should be provided to all population. It is especially important to pay attention to the right timing and availability of the services and support. Services should be close to people. Services that seek people in need and work where they are, should be increased. Preventive work and supportive services for families should be invested in. Guarantee for therapy should be ratified and training for psychotherapists should be free of charge in order to increase the number of therapists. Working age populations’ job well-being should be invested in and we should guarantee high quality occupational health services to all. Longterm inpatient rehabilitation is needed to treat severe substance abuse problems. Possible trial of monitored drug consumption facilities should be examined in order to prevent the spread of infectious diseases and to guarantee humane treatment of people with drug abuse problems. In addition, it is important to affect the attitudes of the population and healthcare professionals in order to wipe away the stigma.
To be a part of the Finnish society and to have something meaningful to do in life, is everyone’s right and benefits the whole society. Everyone should have equal chances to participate and effect on things. I support everyone’s right for equality and inclusion, no matter if you are an elderly person, disabled person or immigrant. It is important to invest on education and work for peace and inclusion.
Elderly people need services that promote their well-being and inclusion as well as, are accessible. Assistance and support to digital services should be available. Services should be accessible also for visually and hearing impaired people as well as for the physically disabled.
The inclusion of people with different disabilities should be promoted by for example encouraging companies to hire disabled people and by increasing possibilities for part-time work.
We should invest more in the integration of immigrants. Companies should be encouraged to hire more employees with immigrant background. Entrepreneurship of the immigrants should be supported. Immigrants need to receive support to access services they need, and services should be linguistically accessible, multilingual and plain language.
Many global crisis, such as, Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, have emphasized the need to increase Finland’s self-sustainability in the field of energy. In the near future, we should invest in increasing domestic energy productions, especially clean and reusable forms of energy, such as hydro-, solar and wind energy and geothermal energy.