Moving to a new country is always a big life change and it affects the whole family.
According to The Family Federation of Finland, the problems with family circumstances are tied to integration and vice versa: the possible problems with integrating to a new country might reflect on parenting and families.
It’s crucial that families have support in the changing life situations.
It’s crucial that families have support in the changing life situations.
International House Joensuu helps immigrants with questions related to settling in and integration. Many clients have families and questions about family life in Finland. Families might struggle finding their way of parenting between different cultures.
For many the Finnish climate and changing seasons are a strange thing and newcomers might wonder how to dress a child properly for day-care for each season and whether it really is a common thing to let your baby sleep outside.
Also in the Finnish rather individualistic culture, there are many things that might seem a little strange and stir up a discussion amongst parents, like the early independency of the children compared to many other cultures.
Multicultural parenting groups have been popular
International House Joensuu has been developing services for immigrant families to help with their integration. In city of Oulu they’ve organized multicultural parenting groups and the same activity has now been launched in Joensuu.
The idea is to offer immigrant families a safe place to discuss topics in their own language. Topics such as how to support the child’s bilingualism and the formation of the child’s cultural identity, how to protect children from the risks of the Internet and what kind of support and services the city of Joensuu offers for families.
– It´s also a great way to get to know other parents in the same situations and find peer support, says Project Coordinator Henni Pekkarinen from International House Joensuu.
In Joensuu there have been two Arabic groups so far. In the future, the aim is to arrange parenting groups in other languages too.
The Multicultural Parenting group has been popular among the immigrant families and there’s a need for activities like this.
– The Multicultural Parenting group has been popular among the immigrant families and there’s a need for activities like this. It’s been great to see, how we have managed to create a safe place for parents to discuss parenthood with other parents, says groups advisor in charge and integration advisor Kaisu Pylkkänen (also in the picture) from International House Joensuu.
The group has gained positive feedback from the participants, and they’ve said they hope every immigrant family could attend.
Pylkkänen has also gotten familiar with a working method called Perhe yhtenäiseksi (“Make families whole”), which offers preventative support for refugee families. With these methods they’ve had great results at the immigrant services of city of Oulu: the child welfare cases dropped around 50 percent and need for family work 75 percent.
Other integration advisors at International House Joensuu have also been training to use various methods to support families and put the methods to use in the integration work.
Family School organizes free time activities for the immigrant families
Schools have also a big role in integration as an increasing number of pupils will be from different cultural background. In Joensuu, the Family School organizes free time activities for the immigrant families where families can get to know each other and learn about the new city and Finnish culture, find hobbies for children. It’s a great way to support the communication between school and families and help them with integration.
City of Joensuu is working towards becoming an even more child friendly city at UNICEF-supported Child Friendly Cities Initiative. Developing services for immigrant families also contributes on achieving the goal to make sure that children’s voice will be heard and considered in the city services.
As we are welcoming immigrants to settle in Joensuu, we must make sure that we also to have services for them and help the whole family to feel welcome and have support in the process.
