Helsinki Highlights

The previous night in Molly Malone's!

Monday 28th May - our mid-evaluation meeting in Helsinki. This is an opportunity for all seven of us in Finland to meet with the Finnish national co-ordinator, Arto, to review our visits and prepare for our final presentation in Berlin. One of our group Steve, chose to have a bath rather than come to breakfast as it was such a luxury to have a room with a bath. Arto had arranged for us to visit the Finnish parliament. Unfortunately he had not been able to book us a tour but we met with a colleague of his from the civil service who gave us a presentation about the parliament in an adjoining building.

A strawberry plant sculpture

A side view of the parliament building

The presentation we were given had taken the theme that parliament is like theatre and so it described there being 200 "leading actors" (MPs) with parliament being the "main stage" for Finnish politics. The Finnish political system is very different to the British. They held the election for their President last April and only after he was elected did they then hold their general elections for the rest of parliament. The President is seen as being above party politics having to be independent and somewhat separate from the day-to-day dealings of parliament. There are 8 main political parties ranging from the very left wing Green party to the very right wing Christian Democrats of "True Finns". After the elections were held last year the candidates who were elected then formed a government. There is never a complete majority but the party with the most votes starts the process. The National Coalition party had the most and then were joined by 5 of the other parties to form the government. The other two parties - including the extreme right party chose to be in opposition. The MPs term of office is for 4 years. The elections last year saw the biggest shift of power to the far right. They had had 5 seats and then gained a total of 39 seats.

Generally MPs vote according to their party line. However, there have been two votes where they were allowed to vote according to their personal views. In 2002 on the issue of civil partnerships and this was carried and then in 2007 where they voted to allow the expansion of the use of nuclear power. There has recently been some speculation as to whether there will be a vote on euthanasia and it was thought this would be an individual vote, but many think that this will not come to the political arena for voting.

The government are actively involved in working on health and social care issues including developing a healthy workforce.  Some of the proposals are to make young people finish their studies quicker so that they become a part of the workforce sooner. There is are initiatives to support post-retirement work, allowing people to remain part-time in work and so retain their productivity and their experience in the workplace.

It was suggested that there is still a lot of resistance to change and a tendency to work in traditional ways. For example, in public health which includes maternity care, the nurses work a standard 8-4 day. However, most women who attend for appointments are still working and so they should considering offering appointments out of work hours so that their working life is not interrupted. This has occurred in dentistry to allow people to have their treatment in their own time rather than needing to take time out of their working time.

We then travelled to Orton hospital which is a specialist orthopaedic centre. It was established during the war for young disabled people and also offered a vocational education. It has developed as a major orthopaedic centre with a rehab unit, state supported vocational unit with a school for the disabled and the company Respekta is based there which is a leading producer of prosthetics and equipment. We met our host, Heikke, who gave us a brief explanation of the hospital's work and we spent the rest of the afternoon working on our presentation for Berlin.

At about 5pm Heikke collected us and took us up to a room - there was a pianist playing and there was food and wine. It felt slightly surreal being in a hospital having a musical soiree! Heikke sang some traditional Finnish songs to us whilst we ate, and then the pianist carried on playing a variety of music including "My Way"!

The pianist

Our group enjoying the wine

Heikke performing

We had been thinking about the music from Chariots of Fire for our presentation. We asked the pianist if he knew this. He did not so then Lars downloaded the music on his ipad and I played it - it was great fun! We then left the hospital. The group felt inspired by then singing to go on to a karaoke club - I was too tired and also wanted to speak to my Dad after his knee operation so I went back to the hotel. I had thought I would restart blogging but the internet was down. I started to wonder if I would manage to catch up, but I am almost there now!