Quality report (OSF): Institutional and housing services in social welfare

Data description

Description of statistic

The institutional and housing services in social welfare statistics and the Care Register for Social Welfare (Sosiaalihilmo), on which the statistics are based, contain data on clients and days of care in institutional and housing services in social welfare. The statistics also contain data on appointments and care periods in specialised medical care and clients receiving long-term care in health centres from the Care Register for Health Care (Terveyshilmo) and data on appointments in primary healthcare and regular home care clients from the Register of Primary Health Care Visits (Avohilmo). The collection of data is based on the Act on the National Institute for Health and Welfare (668/2008).

The Care Register for Social Welfare contains data from 1995 onwards. The data are published annually in May and June of the year following the statistical year.

The statistical report is intended for public and private social welfare and healthcare service providers, social welfare professionals, administrative authorities, planning officers and researchers.

Relevance

The data describes the use of institutional and housing services in social welfare collected in the Care Register for Social Welfare. The data are utilised for purposes such as unit cost calculation, research and the formation of other statistics. The statistics also describe the use of primary healthcare and specialised medical care among the clients of the services concerned.

Data content of the statistics

The statistics on institutional and housing services are based on care notifications submitted by private and public service providers in the Care Register for Social Welfare. Notifications of the end of care filed after the end of a client's care period are collected from institutional services and 24-hour service housing for older people, institutional services and group-based 24-hour housing support for persons with disabilities, institutional services and 24-hour service housing for persons with intellectual disabilities, 24-hour service housing for persons with severe disabilities and mental health rehabilitees, and institutional services for people in special substance abuse and addiction services. In addition to the above, calculation notifications on clients covered by the services on 31 December are also collected from non-24-hour housing services: communal housing for older people, persons with intellectual disabilities, persons with severe disabilities and mental health rehabilitees, and group-based housing support with part-time assistance for persons with disabilities. Data on deaths were obtained from the Population Information System. The data by wellbeing services county is based on the clients’ municipality of residence. The data on the use of specialised medical care are based on Terveyshilmo data, and the data on the use of primary healthcare and clients receiving regular home care are based on Avohilmo data.

The statistical population consists of all persons covered by institutional and housing services in social welfare. It does not include child welfare institutions, family homes for children and young people, family care based on a commission agreement, and housing service units for special services is substance use and addiction work, as no care notifications are submitted on these services.

The statistics present data on the number of residents and population shares in institutional and housing services in social welfare at the turn of the year, and data on the number of residents and days of care during the year. Data on the use of health services is presented as proportions of clients in institutional and housing services. The population proportions use population data from the turn of the year. The key concepts and variables used in the statistics have been described as part of the statistical report.

Statistical process 

Source data 

The statistics are based on the data in the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare’s Care Register for Social Welfare and additionally use data from the Care Register for Health Care (Terveyshilmo) and the Register of Primary Health Care Visits (Avohilmo). The register data are also supplemented with data on deaths from the Population Information System.

Data collection method 

Service providers must submit the care notification data in social welfare to the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare by the end of February of the following year if no other annual due date has been set. The data are delivered either by uploading the Hilmo transfer files generated from the client and patient data systems to THL’s form service or by entering client-specific data into THL’s Hilmo software used in a browser.
More information on the data collection methods used for the Terveyshilmo and Avohilmo registers is available in their respective quality reports.

Data validation 

When submitting Care Register for Social Welfare data using the form service, the automatic data reception function sends a feedback message that also provides information on data that may be inaccurate. A notification may also be completely rejected if it does not contain mandatory data, and the data cannot be received. Data providers may also be contacted separately to correct inaccurate data. When using the Hilmo software to submit data, the software will alert you when you enter inaccurate data or when data are missing. The errors found in the data submitted to the Care Register for Social Welfare concern matters such as the service sectors and the start time of care. The dataset has also included persons no longer covered by the service. Any errors detected are corrected during the data collection process. The data can be compared with those submitted in the previous year, and the data providers can be contacted in case there are major changes in the data. Based on the service provider register (TOPI) in social welfare and healthcare, data providers whose data have not been received by the deadline can be contacted.

Processing of the data 

The care notification data in the Care Register for Social Welfare are used to calculate the data on numbers and population proportions for each service sector. The number of clients receiving regular home care is reported from the Avohilmo data. The data are combined with other Hilmo data, which are used as the basis of calculating the proportions of clients using healthcare services by each service sector.

Data revision

Data from previous statistical years are updated retroactively if necessary in connection with the next statistical publication if new data have been received, and Sotkanet indicator data and time series are also updated. The figures from previous years presented in the new reports include these new data. Typically, the data are more precise as a result of previously missing data having been submitted at a later date.

Quality assessment of the statistics

Accuracy and reliability 

Based on service providers, the coverage of the statistics is approximately 97%. The primary responsibility for ensuring the accuracy of the data lies with the party submitting the data. The register data are correct if they have been reported accurately. There may be errors and shortcomings in the published statistics. Where possible, any errors detected during the normal data collection process have been corrected immediately after noticing the error. Missing data are discussed in the quality report sections “Special issues concerning the 2025 statistics” and “Coherence and comparability”.
The detailed data content of the Care Register for Social Welfare and variable-specific quality observations are available in the Data Catalogue.

Timeliness and punctuality

The statistical report titled Institutional Care and Housing Services in Social Welfare is made up of statistics produced by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare once a year, published around May and June.

Each year, some data are not delivered by the deadline. Sending reminders of the missing data and submissions of data after the deadline or completely missing data slows down the process of compiling statistics and impairs data quality.

Coherence and comparability 

The Care Register for Social Welfare contains data from 1995 onwards. While over time, changes have been made to the data content of the register, the most essential data content has remained nearly unchanged, with the data describing the service provider, clients, becoming a client and leaving care, and the service received by clients. In 2023, variables not used in reporting, whose quality or coverage was inadequate, which had been previously removed from other data content of the Care Register for Health Care, or which will not be available from the social welfare data available through the Kanta archive later, were removed from the data content.

Since 2019, the data on home care in the statistics have been obtained from the Avohilmo register.
Home care data from Avohilmo are available from 2014 onwards.

For this statistical report, the persons selected as home care clients were the recipients of home care during the final week of December. This time limit was set to obtain a cross-section of home care clients comparable to the use of other services. In a home care report based on the Avohilmo data, the regular home care client has completed a care period during the year, which has involved carrying out home care visits on at least six days within a 60-day period. Using this selection criterion as such would distort the coverage of services, as a person previously receiving regular home care during the year may no longer be covered by the service at the turn of the year. The final week of December (24–31 December) has been used in place of the last day of the year, because in the Avohilmo regular home care data set, the care period ends with a final session at the end of the year, and the last day of the year is a different day of the week each year, making the number of clients on this day significantly lower if the day happens to be a Saturday or Sunday.

Starting with the 2025 data, the data collected in the Care Register for Social Welfare has only included the special institutional services in substance use and addiction work provided in social welfare. Previously, detoxification treatment was also included. Data from previous years are not comparable with the 2025 data.

There are deficiencies caused by problems in information systems in the data on Vantaa, Helsinki, Kerava and Kauniainen in the period 2019–2023. Since 2024, no deficiencies have been detected in the data obtained from these municipalities. More detailed figures by service sector from Vantaa and Helsinki are provided in the quality description for the 2024 statistical report (Julkari) (in Finnish).

Institutional mandate  

The production of the statistics is based on the Act on the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (668/2008) and the Act on Statistics (280/2004). One of the official tasks of the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare is to produce statistical data on the health and welfare of the population, the factors affecting them, and the use and functioning of healthcare and social welfare services to support decision-making, development and research. The Institutional and housing services in social welfare statistics are part of the statistical series of the Official Statistics of Finland (OSF). THL’s statistical production practices are guided by the instructions, recommendations and regulations of Eurostat and the Official Statistics of Finland, as well as the principles of statistical ethics. A valid administrative decision (in Finnish) has been made on the care notification data on the institutional and housing services in social welfare .

Data sharing and publishing 

The statistics are published on the home page of the statistics at thl.fi at a time indicated in the statistics publication calendar. The data is made public to all users at the same time. Some of the data are also published by wellbeing services county in the statistics and indicator bank Sotkanet and by wellbeing services counties as database reports.

The statistical products published by THL are public, but register data containing personal data are confidential. The Finnish Social and Health Data Permit Authority Findata grants permits for using the data based on the Act on the Secondary Use of Health and Social Data (552/2019).

Confidentiality 

As an authority, the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare is obligated to report collected data related to health and welfare. The data used to draw up THL’s statistics is primarily confidential, and personal data may not be published. The protection of processed data is based on the Act on the National Institute for Health and Welfare (668/2008), the Statistics Act (280/2004) and the Act on the Openness of Government Activities (621/1999), the EU General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and the Data Protection Act (1050/2018).

THL’s datasets are secured at all stages of processing. Data and information systems can only be accessed by persons who have a data permit to use certain data for clearly defined purposes. Others do not have the ability to view, process, change or delete data. Written instructions have been drawn up for ensuring the data protection of completed statistics. All THL personnel who process data have signed a non-disclosure agreement.

Special issues concerning the 2025 statistics 

The statistics for the 2025 statistical year contain the data received from service providers by 17 April 2026. No significant deficiencies in the data have been detected compared to previous years. The previous years’ data missing from Vantaa and Helsinki are discussed in more detail in the section "Coherence and comparability" of the quality report. For some of the service providers of communal housing that produce clients’ services as home care, the system used did not allow for submitting home care data to Avohilmo. As a result, the reported proportion of clients of communal housing who are also regular home care clients is lower than the actual number. Some of the providers of communal housing services have used a system that only allowed them to submit home care notifications to Avohilmo, and the calculation notifications from communal housing are missing from Sosiaalihilmo. Information on the quality of the data on home care, primary healthcare and specialised medical care is provided in the quality reports of these statistics.

The system used by an individual service provider of special institutional services in substance use and addiction work did not enable distinguishing healthcare periods from social welfare periods. The periods are included in the reported data because, according to the estimate received, at least 80 per cent of the care periods of the service provider concerned are social welfare periods, so omitting the data would have distorted the reported data more. At the wellbeing services county level, this affects the wellbeing services county of Vantaa and Kerava, where an estimated 4% of clients and 5% of care periods during the year would be categorised as healthcare, and the wellbeing services county of North Karelia, where an estimated 10% of clients and 9 per cent of care periods would be categorised as healthcare. In other wellbeing services counties and at the national level, the proportion of healthcare clients and care periods is low.