Professionals fights for the underprivileged people

I participated to the seminar called Mental health and well-being- focus on homeless and underprivileged populations (22.4.-23.4.2016)§ that was hosted by my study place Diaconia University of Applied Sciences. What an interesting weekend!

On Saturday Sakari Kainulainen held a very interesting lecture about poverty in welfare state. Poverty isn't only about one's lack of money. It's also about lack of possibilities, interaction and knowledge on services. Poverty leads to risk of exclusion and professionals and civil helpers should focus on this group of people so they could gain back their status as a full member of the community. Everybody deserves to be accepted and helped to gain their full potential to be happy in their own terms. The key word for the client and professional relationship is TRUST.

PhD Päivi Rissanen gave a memorable presentation of her doctoral thesis that was about her own recovery path from severe mental illness towards happy and fulfilled life. Social and health professionals need to hear people to tell their stories and experiences in order to learn and develop new means to do their work and encounter people. Rissanen showed a map about the professional helper networks during her 27 years of mental illness. The map was very complicated and showed clearly how complex and fragmented the service network is in Finland and how much it takes of a person to cope in that bureaucratic system. The most important lesson about Rissanen's lecture to me was that it takes lots of patience, a functional professional network combined with peer groups and hope and dreams for rehabilitee to be able to recovery.

On Sunday we heard about the situation of refugees and made couple group works with the international students. It was a challenge to try to interact with a foreign language! It made me think that it would be useful to take a discussion course in English to improve ability to talk in with other students and professionals and especially with clients.

All in all the seminar was extremely interesting, useful and fun!

Who am I?  

Sanna Väisänen, age 44, works in municipal social office full time, studies the master's degree (The promotion of health and well-being at risk of exclusion) Diaconia University of Applied Sciences.