Authors

• University of Vaasa. Faculty of Public Administration

Keywords

care of the disabled, care of the elderly, decision making, development, health services, home help, local government, local government officers, local government services, management, social services

Abstract

The dataset is part of the social and health services research in the Finnish Local Government 2004 research programme. The research studied administration, service provision, and development policies of home help and municipal services for the elderly and the disabled. The respondents were local government officers responsible for services for the elderly and the disabled and home help services in research municipalities. Social services for the elderly and the disabled have also been researched in 2000 and 2002.

First, the respondents were asked some basic information about service provision in their municipality. Questions covered the number of clients and the number of service performances in institutional care, supported living, transportation services and home help services. Further questions covered the number of individuals in the care of their family members and the number of individuals participating in integration or supported employment. The costs of the care for the elderly, care for the disabled and home help were investigated as well as the funding for service provision. The number of staff in different service tasks and the percentage of family care in the social services for the elderly and disabled were charted.

The service provision of municipal services for the elderly and the disabled was investigated with questions focusing on who were responsible for providing different services, whether services had been put out to tender, whether the respondents were satisfied with the functionality of the services, which municipal bodies made the decisions concerning the use of purchased services and the provider of those services, and whether the respondents' municipality sold home services and services for the elderly and disabled to other municipalities. Questions were also asked about the management of services for the elderly and disabled (e.g. the importance of different bodies in decision making, whether any surveys or interviews had been conducted to assess/improve services and the importance of performance measurement in service provision).

In the final section, the development policy regarding service provision was surveyed. The respondents were asked whether the services had changed after 1992 in terms of the number of clients, financial resources, provision of private services, cooperation between municipalities etc, how they would rate different aspects of the services (number of staff, location and accessiblity of the services...) and on which areas the development of services should be focused in the following years.

Background variables included, among others, municipality, the respondent's mother tongue, year of birth, job title, job experience, level of education and positions of responsibility.