The Case of Finland: Latecomer in the Nordic Context

This paper will present findings of a historical inquiry into child abuse and neglect in child protection institutions and foster homes in Finland. The project was initiated by the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health... [ view full abstract ]

This paper will present findings of a historical inquiry into child abuse and neglect in child protection institutions and foster homes in Finland. The project was initiated by the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health in 2013, and completed in April 2016. Ca 300 oral, qualitative interviews were conducted in 2014-15 collecting memories and experiences of the victims and eye witnesses.
Historical perspectives of neglect and abuse impacted the scope of the inquiry. The inquiry focused on the years 1937-83, i.e. the period of the first Finnish Child Welfare Act. The scope of the inquiry was based on the main forms of child protection measures defined in the Act: foster homes and institutional care. An important aim was to recognize and make visible all forms of neglect, abuse and violence taken place in the past. A leading principle of the project was to take interviewees’ memories and experiences as real and valuable without comparing them with historical "facts", but also to locate them firmly in a specific historical context of the Finnish society and its child protection system. One of the outspoken aims was to learn from the past and to find solutions to prevent and intervene more effectively into such misconduct in the future.
This paper will discuss how historic abuse was framed in the Finnish inquiry and present the main findings. The Finnish case, among others, reveals the silence and personal shame connected to the childhood not only in children’s homes and other institutions but also in foster homes. As e.g. the Swedish inquiry has demonstrated, foster homes have sometimes been even more abusive than institutions. During the project, many of the interviewees spoke about their traumatic childhood for the first time in their life. However, many of the interviewees wanted to participate not only to help themselves to cope with the trauma, but also because they wanted to help children in the present day.
About the author: I am Professor of History at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Tampere. In 2014-2016 I was in charge of the Finnish Inquiry into Child Abuse and Neglect in Institutions and Foster Homes (Department of History and Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä). My research concerns gender history and the history of childhood and youth. I am a member of The International Network on Studies of Inquiries into Child Abuse, Politics of Apology and Historical Representations of Children in Out-of-Home Care coordinated by Dr Johanna Sköld.E-mail pirjo.markkola@uta.fi