Hali and SuPer: Sufficient professional language skills must be ensured for foreign-language nurses
Nearly 200,000 people will retire from the health and social care services sector over the next 15 years, in addition to which the population’s need for services will increase significantly. Immigration is often proposed as one solution to this challenging equation. On 1 October, the Finnish Association of Private Care Providers (Hali) and the Finnish Union of Practical Nurses SuPer organised a decision-making event to discuss the issues of international recruitment and labour-based immigration.
Finland is one of the fastest ageing countries in the world: the number of people over the age of 85 in Finland will grow by almost 90% by 2040, and it is estimated that there will be a quarter of a million people with memory disorders alone. At the same time, a large number of social care and health care professionals are retiring.
“There will be a shortage of professionals in the health and social care services sector in the near future, and we need different solutions to ensure adequate care. One solution is labour-based immigration. Integration and language learning are not always easy, even if colleagues and the employer support them. We challenge decision-makers to solve these problems together with employer and employee parties. In the future, new technological solutions will also help in this,” says Hali’s CEO Sanna Aunesluoma.
Hali and SuPer believe that social care and health care professionals should have easier access to jobs that correspond to their education and skills. At present, trained nurses from outside the EU and EEA often start as care assistants in Finland, even though their skills are often sufficient for more demanding tasks. Placement in more demanding tasks would be best secured if the newcomers had sufficient professional language skills.
“In the health and social care services sector, you work very closely with people, which emphasises the importance of language skills. We are seriously concerned about whether the language skills of both nurses who have already arrived in the country and new labour-based immigrant nurses will be sufficient. It is important that these nurses integrate into our society and stay in Finland to work,” emphasises SuPer’s President Päivi Inberg.
The unions consider that, for example, repeated changes in the staffing levels of care for the elderly or insufficient funding from the wellbeing services counties lead to an unpredictable operating environment, which also affects the success of international recruitment. There are currently unemployed nurses in Finland, but the situation will change significantly in the next few years.
“A responsible labour market policy and sensible use of resources are essential for Finland to maintain its capacity for successful international recruitment in the future as well,” Aunesluoma concludes.
Further information
The Finnish Association of Private Care Providers (Hali), CEO Sanna Aunesluoma, 050 512 2380
The Finnish Union of Practical Nurses, President Päivi Inberg, 040 705 9115
Publiced in English 3.10.20225.