Thursday, September 29, 2016
Can you help? Non-Finns need not apply!
Yesterday, I had a 'Eureka!' moment. I realized I can do more to help around my community and it would also be a lot of fun for me and my kids (ok, I admit I didn't consult dd on this). In Espoo, it is possible to sign up to become a volunteer 'support person' for families with children. A support person caters to the needs of a family in need of support. Tasks can range from looking after the kids of a single mom for a few hours so she gets a bit of breathing space to helping kids with their homework to making sure the parents get bills payed on time. My own kids are very social, and always want new play mates, so I figured, what the heck, the more the merrier - if there's a family that needs some time off from their kids around here (especially immigrants who don't have family in Finland who could help out sometimes) it's no biggy for us to entertain a few kids for a few hours. We practically have a swinging door at our apartment, anyhow!
Espoo outsources their support person services to an NGO. I got in touch with them, and this was the answer:
"Unfortunately our volunteer work as a support person requires that you speak Finnish because most of the families seeking help are Finnish. Especially children in the families speak Finnish. In order to communicate with them you should be able to speak Finnish. ... If you are able to speak Finnish you are most warmly welcome to participate."
I remember, when I worked as an interpreter, these services were sometimes offered to Thai women. Their first question was usually, 'Does the person speak Thai?', to which the social worker would answer, 'Unfortunately not - they speak Finnish.' I had the same experience in Saimit. Many Thai women asked if we had Thai mentors for them. The experience is repeating itself in Amigo right now. Some immigrant youths are asking whether we have someone they can talk to in their own language, or at least not Finnish all the time.
So, where is the gap? There is a need for services in one's own language, and there is a will to help in languages other than Finnish. But there is also some kind of idea that not speaking Finnish is automatically a problem.
The formula for eligibility for both social workers and for this particular NGO appears to be something like this:
X + Y = 'Action'
where
X = Desire to contribute
AND
Y = Need for support
If foreign language is thrown into the mix, it is a 'zero multiplier'
No Finnish * (X+Y) = 0 * Action
As far as I can tell, this creates a situations where A) human resources are wasted, and more importantly B) People who are genuinely in need of support would rather do without it, as it can be cumbersome to discuss sensitive personal matters while struggling to express them in a weak second language.
Of course, I do understand that it is important to learn a second language when integrating into a new country. But let's not mix up two separate needs here: One is the need to solve social or psychological problems (lack of access to services, lack of time, unresolved traumas), and the other is the need to learn a language in order to integrate into a new country. Learning the language will help you access services, but it won't help you resolve the other problems. And the question remains - should you only be allowed to access social services after you've learned the language, and not before?
As early as the 70s, psycholinguistic research (Marcos, 1976) found that while it may be easier to talk about your problems in a foreign language (without having a meltdown) it is much more difficult to address the roots of the problem in one's own language. Nothing has changed.
One NGO in particular, Nicehearts, with their 'Naapuriäiti' model, does an excellent job using research in the field of integration in their decision making process. The question is, why doesn't the state?
Another factor to consider is the group of foreigners who come to Finland on a work visa. In general, businesses take very good care of them. And they do not need to learn Finnish. So the consensus is that foreigners with a paycheck will be served in a manner and language convenient for them. Foreigners without a guaranteed paycheck upon arrival shall be given whatever treatment is convenient for the service providers. This kind of discrimination would be fine in a country that doesn't promise equal access to services for all people. But this is Finland - a social democracy that explicitly promises equality of access. I live in Espoo, so I took a peek at the Espoo City website.
The city of Espoo has a Equality Committee, and their page explicitly states:
"The Act on Equality between Women and Men and the Non-Discrimination Act oblige all officials of Espoo to promote equality and non-discrimination in all of their activities."
Nowhere does it say: "But only in Finnish".
But that seems to be the general attitude. I find it deeply disparaging that the current social model only seeks to include foreigners if a) they have a paycheck or b) if they want to speak Finnish, both on the volunteer and the support side.
At my work place (Helsingin Diakonissalaitos), we run a volunteer programme where the philosophy is that anyone with the will to participate in civic activities should be included and empowered. The need to help is as real and urgent as the need for help, and perhaps I am speaking for myself, but we tend to think that both factors are equally important should be in balance. Maybe that's why we are officially called the Community Programmes, as opposed to Volunteer Programmes.
Our formula looks something like this: X + Y = Z or 'Urgency of action.'
Where:
X = Strength of desire to contribute
Y = Urgency of need for support
where X and Y are roughly equal
The action taken is a sum of the urgency of action + the result of variables A, B, C. So the result should be something like this:
Z + (A*B*C) = Action taken.
'Language of operation' is one of those variables, and not the 'zero multiplier' that makes the equation an impossibility.
Having those 'zero multipliers' that create hurdles in access to services is a big problem in a service model that promises equitable access. Having those 'zero multipliers' means that services are inaccessible to certain groups. It does not mean that those groups do not exist. City of Espoo: Your failure to reach out to these groups is in direct violation of the Non-Discrimination Act.
My vote is going to the party that addresses these issues!
Just sayin'.
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Labels: city council, discrimination, equal access, espoon kaupunki, language, vaalit, volunteering
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