One big reason for the poverty in welfare state is the lack of interaction, says Sakari Kainulainen based on his research. That said aloud awakens me to realize even deeper how important interaction between people is. I started to value my own work with young people even more after hearing this since I'm organizing the peer groups for lonely youngsters. And since I hear foreign youngsters being even in bigger risk to exlude, I would love to start working more with them too. People just need people.
Kainulainen talks about loneliness how serious problem it is in our society. For example drinking, eating, drugs, internet, porno is often used to get rid of the feelings of loneliness. Money is not the answer but connections between people are. Poor and rich can be as happy, says Kainulainen. Already Aristotele said that without friends no one would want to live, even if he had all other goods. People are important!
The role of the social workers is to awaken our customers to think about their own lives, says Sakari Kainulainen. Also Päivi Rissanen said how the turning point in her life was when the worker saw her as a person, not as a patient. Dreams started to take role in her life. She also mentioned peer support being an important part of her rehabilitation. I want to be the social worker who can see and hear the people who need my help. Empowering them is my goal.
Also when visiting Lehmuskoti, what is the last place to live for drug users, we hear how good the community and togetherness is for the customers' rehabilitation. They believe in "housing first" idea in Lehmuskoti but as soon as the person lives in Lehmuskoti they start building trust with him or her. The worker says how the trust is often very difficult to build but once you get it it's very rewarding. So empowering our customers starts by building trust, we know that, but I can only imagine how difficult it is in Lehmuskoti. What I was easily able to sense is that especially those people have been lonely in their lives and I am so happy seeing this type of place where they are so well taken care of. Enormous amount of respect for the workers!
Our group work with Norwegian students about asylym seekers and how could they adapt better in Scandinavian countries brought us to think about how important it is that people do co-operate in every level. We ended up to discuss how interaction is the answer to reduce the fear what both asylym seekers and residents often feel and what is often the cause of the problems. Interesting is that also in our final group work we found out that the connection between people was the most important thing in one of the studies what compared two different type of therapy orientations, not what exact type of therapy person gets. So interaction between people is the answer!
Who am I?
Anne Elojärvi
Student of Diakonia University of Applied Sciences
Master's Program in Social Services
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