Browsing by Author "Miikkulainen, Venla"

Objectives. According to the Child Welfare Act (417/2007, 3a §) the vital parties in preventive child welfare are public services, including educational administration. Preventive child welfare aims in guaranteeing welfare when the child is not a customer of child welfare. The goal is to support children at an early stage, during which it is still possible to prevent problems escalating any further. (Bardy, 2013.) Furthermore, the aim of this study was to map teachers' experiences on child welfare in school environment. The study looks at how teachers at primary schools perceive their awareness of child welfare work, how child welfare concerns of primary school teachers show up, and what kind of experiences primary school teachers have with regards to the cooperation with child welfare. Methods. The thesis was carried out as a qualitative research, based on the phenomenological approach. The study was conducted at an elementary school with seven teachers participating in the theme interviews, five individual interviews, and one pair interview. Out of all the participants, three were class teachers, two subject teachers, and two special education teachers. In addition to theme interviews, an email containing three open-ended questions was sent to all the participants in August 2017. The data was analysed via theme-analysis. Results and Conclusions. Teachers felt they were able to partly put into practice the child welfare act, despite the bigger picture of it being unclear. Teachers' awareness of child welfare came mainly as a result of their own work and experience. Teachers' perceptions of preventative child welfare work at the school were related to student work, school curator activities, co-operation with parents, and teachers' pedagogical methods in the classroom. The raise of concern regarding child welfare was affected by troubles at school, behavior, general appearance, home life, and the negligence of parents toward the school life of their children. The concerns that raised from the students' behavior were often seen as multi-dimensional and aggregated. Teachers' child welfare concerns awakening is often affected by the child's school, problems, behavior, general appearance, home life, or the parents' indifference towards school-going. Ways to deal with concerns were open discussion and, as a last resort, a child welfare notice. Experiences in co-operation with child protection were varied, but often the co-operation was not working well enough. In particular, the flow of information was considered inadequate. Nearly all of the teachers hoped for better co-operation between schools and the child welfare.