Quality report: Social welfare clients
Data description
Statistical presentation
The statistics provide an overview of the volume of social welfare clients, their age distribution and clients served by several service tasks. The statistics are prepared based on information submitted by the wellbeing services counties and the client data repository of the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela) to the social welfare monitoring register. Data is available starting from 2023. This is the second statistical publication. Data has previously been published in THL’s Working Paper series. The statistics are published four times a year.
Relevance
The statistics can be used to assess the scope and effectiveness of social welfare services. In the Social welfare clients statistics, data are reported for the purposes of research, assessment, development and guidance of social welfare and social services.
Data content of the statistics
The statistics include Finnish social welfare clients in six of the seven social welfare service tasks. The social welfare service tasks are services for families with children, services for working-age adults, services for older people, family law services, child welfare, services for persons with disabilities, and special substance use and addiction services. Family law services are not as yet included in the target group of the social welfare monitoring register and these statistics.
The client relationship in the service task begins from the initiation of proceedings in the first matter and lasts until the client relationship is closed. A social welfare client may be a person applying for a social service, a recipient of a social service or a client in whose matter proceedings have been initiated in social welfare services. A person receiving general information or advice from social services is not a social welfare client.
The statistics cover client relationships subject to the responsibility for organising public services. Private service enablers have not as yet been obligated to provide client relationship data through a separate delivery. In future, the data will be brought to the social welfare monitoring register through the Kanta Services. If private service enablers record the client relationship data in the information system and client register used by the wellbeing services county when providing social services to wellbeing services counties, the data of these clients are already included in the target group of the monitoring register and are part of the wellbeing services county’s client information.
The Statistics Report text describes the concepts used in the statistics. The information content follows the concepts of the information management vocabulary of social welfare and the classifications of the national client data model of social welfare (e.g., service tasks). Some concepts have also been defined for the purposes of the statistics (e.g., the client relationship period in the service task).
Statistical processing
Source data
The statistics are based on THL’s social welfare monitoring register, which contains information on social welfare clients in Finland (excluding Åland). The wellbeing services counties responsible for organising social welfare services and the City of Helsinki have an obligation to submit the data on social welfare clients to THL. There are two routes for collecting the data:
- Kela submits the client data from systems that store the data in the Client Data Repository for Social Welfare Services (Kanta) to THL as data deliveries at least four times a year. The client relationship period in the service task is established from case documents or the client relationship document.
- Wellbeing services counties that do not yet store their data comprehensively in the Client Data Repository for Social Welfare Services submit the data separately to THL four times a year using THL’s data delivery service.
Slightly more than half of the data for October, November and December 2025 were received through the Kanta Services. The data that are delivered separately have been recorded in wellbeing services counties by using several different client and patient information systems. It is characteristic of client information systems that the recording of data even by using the same client information system varies locally and the data submitted to the social welfare monitoring register may have been formed in different ways.
The data is supplemented with the municipality of residence and the date of death from the Population Information System. Data from the Digital and Population Data Services Agency are also used in the calculation of population proportions.
3.2. Data collection
The following data have been taken into account in this statistical report:
- Data stored in the Kanta services and data submitted by Kela to THL on 8 January 2026
- Data submitted to THL by using the data delivery service by 30 January 2025.
- Review feedback provided by wellbeing services counties by 22 March 2026.
THL accepts supplementing data to the monitoring register through both the Kanta Services and a separate delivery. As a result, the volumes of clients are updated retroactively in the subsequent statistical publications.
In the future, the collection of data will be carried out on a daily basis. This can be done when all wellbeing services counties have joined the Kanta Services with a sufficiently capable system. This also allows speeding up the data reporting.
Data validation
THL strives to check and correct the data as extensively as possible. The aim is to identify missing and incorrect data.
Every three months, a report on their own data, obtained by THL either from the Client Data Repository or in a separate delivery, is published for the wellbeing services counties in Yhteistyötilat. Counties can review data throughout the year, but once a year, they also receive a separate request to review the data accumulated in the monitoring register and return a review feedback form describing the quality of the data. Wellbeing services counties last reviewed the data in March 2026. The data is also compared with THL’s other register and statistical data on social welfare services.
Data compilation
THL combines the data obtained from different sources and processes the data material to improve its quality. Processing rules are used to establish client relationship periods when data is conflicting. In the processing of the now published data, the start and end dates in the client relationship document have been weighted more than open case documents, but the processing rules are developed constantly. The client relationship periods of deceased persons are terminated to their date of death. Clients’ municipality of residence and age have been combined from the population register data of the last day of each monitoring period.
Data revision
If necessary, data from previous monitoring periods are updated retroactively in connection with the next statistical publication.
Quality assessment of the statistics
Accuracy and reliability
In Finland, 21 wellbeing services counties and the City of Helsinki are responsible for organising social welfare services. Data from all of them was received in the social welfare monitoring register. The representativeness of the counties’ data (i.e., the quality of the data) varies within the county by municipality and service task (see Table 1 of the Quality Report).
Representativeness may vary because a uniform client information system was not necessarily in use in the county at the beginning of the wellbeing services counties’ operation and it has not been possible to retrieve data for the social welfare monitoring register from all the systems in use. In some wellbeing services counties, some of the social services are recorded in patient information systems, for example. The data of these clients will not be comprehensive in the monitoring register until the data are recorded in client information systems that store data in Kanta.
| Service tasks | Municipalities (number) with data assessed as comprehensive |
Population share in municipalities with data assessed as comprehensive |
Municipalities (number) from which data has been received |
|---|---|---|---|
| Services for older people | 57 | 24,50 % | 299 |
| Services for working-age adults | 116 | 38,30 % | 303 |
| Services for families with children | 109 | 45,60 % | 299 |
| Child welfare | 89 | 20,50 % | 297 |
| Services for persons with disabilities | 103 | 34,20 % | 295 |
| Special substance use and addiction services | 37 | 27,30 % | 285 |
The data in the monitoring register is based on data material generated by data producers and data stored in the client data archive. This means that the accuracy of the data depends mainly on the data obtained from the reporting parties and the entries made by them. As a rule, there were no significant, regular differences between the data retrieved from the Kanta Services and the data delivered separately. In the review feedback, wellbeing services counties have been requested to assess the coverage of their own data. Data quality is described with a classification. In some cases, THL has together with the wellbeing services county also changed a previous estimate.
In the statistical report, data assessed as comprehensive are used in the estimates and the examinations by age group. In the compilation view (Tableau), data assessed as non-comprehensive have also been reported.
Compiling statistics on the number of clients in social welfare services do not yet unambiguously describe only the developments in the number of clients. It is likely that a significant part of the increase in client volumes seen in the statistics is due to the changes in the recording of data and in client information systems. The increase in the number of social welfare clients is also partly explained by the fact that client relationships are not always terminated. Therefore, a decline in the number of clients may also be explained by information service work, in which inactive client relationships have been terminated.
Timeliness and punctuality
The Social welfare clients statistical report is statistics that THL produces four times a year. The data are published within three months of their reception.
The data in the statistical report are based on the data of persons who were social welfare clients during the previous monitoring period (quarter of a year). Wellbeing services counties and Kela send the data no later than two weeks after the end of the monitoring period. The data for the second quarter are an exception as the deadline for submitting the data is a month and a half because of the summer holidays.
Coherence and comparability
The annual statistics from 2023 onwards are not mutually comparable as new client information systems are deployed gradually in the well-being services counties. The counties join the Client Data Repository step by step.
For example, it has been possible to join Kanta in three ways:
- The data from the previous information system have been transferred in their entirety and at once to a system storing data in Kanta, using the actual start dates of the client relationships. In such municipalities, the number of clients seems to rise evenly before the transfer date.
- The data from the previous information system have been transferred in their entirety and at once to a system storing data in Kanta and a specific transfer date has been used. In such municipalities, the number of clients increases at once on the date of the transfer.
- Client relationship documents (and other client documents stored in the Kanta Services) have been prepared alongside the processing related to the client relationship. Because some social services are very long-term services and services can be delivered by the private sector, it may take a long time before the social welfare provider is required to process the client's matter, for example, to make a new decision. In addition, some of the service tasks have separately specified time limits. For example, the client plan for child welfare must be reviewed at least once a year. In such municipalities, the number of clients increases slowly after the system has been deployed.
Institutional mandate
The production of the statistics is based on the Act on the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (688/2008) and the Statistics Act (280/2004, in Finnish). 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. 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.
The Act on the National Institute for Health and Welfare also gives THL the right to utilise data from the Client Data Repository for Social Welfare Services maintained by the Population Information System and Kela.
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. Information on the publication of the statistics is sent electronically to the wellbeing services counties.
Visual reports (Tableau) of clients in service tasks are also published on THL’s website in connection with the statistical report. The reports also enable the user to make their own choices about the material. The report makes it possible to view data by region and municipality, and quarterly.
The statistical reports are public. However, the register 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 (688/2008), 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.
The privacy notice of the register can be viewed online at thl.fi.
Special issues concerning the 2025 statistics
In 2025, the wellbeing services counties are still renewing and harmonising the client information systems used in social welfare services. None of the wellbeing services counties has yet joined the Client Data Repository for Social Welfare Services with an information system compliant with the obligation to join. For this reason, the coverage of the data by wellbeing services county may vary both within the county (by municipality) and between different service tasks.
The number of social welfare clients decreased from the previous estimates. The amount of data assessed as comprehensive, which serves as a basis for calculating the estimate for the whole country, affects the estimated number of clients. The estimated number of clients for October, November and December 2025 is based on more comprehensive data than the previous one (July, August and September 2025) in all service tasks. The number of municipalities whose data has been assessed as comprehensive has increased and they represent a larger proportion of the total population.
In addition, the change in the estimated number of clients can be explained by the data supplemented in THL’s data handling process. An error was detected in the quality reviews of the data, which had led to the client relationship periods remaining active for approximately 20,000 people who had already died. THL will review the data in the monitoring register in relation to population information and terminate the client relationship period on the basis of the date of death recorded in the population information.