Child welfare

Relevance of statistical data

The child welfare statistics contain information on children and young people who have been placed outside the home or who have been child welfare clients in open care. The statistical report on children and young people placed outside the home is based on the register data on child welfare received from municipalities and the statistical information on child welfare clients in open care. 

The information collected to the Register of Child Welfare is received from municipalities as information at the level of persons on an annual basis. The information published in the statistics is information on children and young people whose placement has been a support measure in open care, an urgent placement, a placement into care or an after-care measure. The statistics also contain the details of the child’s or the young person’s placement location and the duration of the placement.

The information on open care activities in child welfare is collected from municipalities as figures. A form is used to request the information on the number of clients, children and young people in the different stages of the open care work process in child welfare by age group. The statistics also contains information from the statistics on social welfare activities and the statistics on time limits in child welfare.

The child welfare statistics are published as a statistical report once a year. The preliminary information on the child welfare statistics is published in March or April. The information published in the preliminary statistics is information from the preceding year, which has been submitted to THL by the requested deadline (28 February 2022).

The concepts and definitions used have been explained in the text of the statistical report.
The report is aimed at the administrative authorities, municipalities, researchers, students and others requiring information on and the number of children and young people placed outside the home.

The processing of the information is based on the Act on the National Institute for Health and Welfare (668/2008) and the Act on the Statistical Service of the National Research and Development Centre for Social Welfare and Health (409/2001).

Description of methods

The information on children and young people placed outside the home and the details of open care activities in child welfare are collected annually from all municipalities in Finland. A request for information is sent to municipalities once a year requesting them to log into the Lasu-Netti web service by the deadline given and verify open placements, record any changes in the placements and report new placements. Information is also requested for the statistics describing open care activities in child welfare. Child welfare information is received in electronic format through the Lasu-Netti web service and updated in THL’s database.

A reminder is sent to those who have not responded by the deadline.

Correctness and accuracy of data

Register of Child Welfare on placements and taking into car

The information submitted to the Register of Child Welfare can be considered reliable because the placements data includes the personal identity code.  Possible mistakes can therefore be tracked and corrected with the help of personal identity codes.

The data received by THL is subjected to certain correctness checks. For example, a child who has been taken into care must be aged under 18 and a young person placed outside the home aged under 21 (as from 1 January 2020, the Act Amending the Child Welfare Act 542/2019 makes the placement of a young person aged under 25 possible as after-care). In after-care, placements to one’s own home to be with a parent are made to end on the young person's 18th birthday and corresponding periods of persons aged over 18 are not considered placements. 

Municipalities often correct the placement information they have submitted on previous years. The reason is likely to be that the client information register of municipalities is still updated after information has been submitted to THL’s statistics. THL’s statistics are then updated and corrected on the basis of information provided by municipalities, and the previously published annual time series data changes when the corrections are made.

If a child or a young person has been placed more than once during the same year, the placement information is published according to the latest placement municipality. Also, if the child or young person has been placed on different grounds and/or in more than in one placement location during the year, the placement information is published according to the latest placement.

Open care measures in child welfare

The information on open care in child welfare is submitted at the level of figures without personal identity codes. The quality of the information submitted to the statistics has varied during the existence of the statistics. Municipalities have not always been able to submit all the information requested for THL’s statistics.

The Social Welfare Act that entered into force on 1 April 2015 clarifies the definition of a child welfare client. The client relationship in child welfare begins when the assessment of service need shows that there is a need for child welfare or child welfare services. Before the entry into force of the Social Welfare Act (1 April 2015), the client relationship in child welfare began when the investigation of the need for child welfare began.

Change in the definition of 0–17-year-olds

The definitions used in the statistics and indicators have been modified for 2021 year’s statistics. Previously, some of the statistics for 0–17-year-olds did not include those placed in care who turned 18 during that year.  However, these placements were included in the statistics for 0–20-year-olds. In the future, the current statistics for 0–17-year-olds will include retroactively all children aged under 18 placed during the year.

The method of compiling statistics has been changed retroactively so that the current statistics for 0–17-year-olds now include all children aged under 18 subject to a placement during the year.

Due to the change, some of the figures presented in the statistical report are not comparable with the figures in the statistical report published earlier in the year.

Timeliness and promptness of published data

The child welfare statistics are statistics produced by THL once a year. The verified information is published in May/June (in previous years, at the end of the year, either in November or December). 

Preliminary information is published on the child welfare information submitted to THL by the deadline (28 February 2022). A few key municipality-specific figures are retrieved to the preliminary statistics. The figures for the entire country are not published in advance unless all the municipalities have submitted their data by the requested deadline.

After a reminder has been sent, the response rate of the municipalities is almost 100 per cent.

Availability and transparency/clarity of data

The Statistical report compiled and updated on the basis of the Register of Child Welfare is available on the THL website.

Child welfare data are also available in the Sotkanet web service, Child welfare indicators can be retrieved using the keyword child welfare.

Sotkanet Statistics and Indicator Bank

Up-to-date information on child welfare issues can also be found in the eHandbook for Child Welfare.
eHandbook for Child Protection (Available only in Finnish)

The municipal social welfare offices receive an e-mail message on the release of updated child welfare data. Nearly 100 per cent of municipalities respond to the data request.

Comparability of statistical data

THL (Stakes until 31 December 2008) has submitted and collected child welfare information since 1991, and comparable time series exists as from then. The content of the concepts and definitions remained unchanged until 2007. 

The current Child Welfare Act entered into force on 1 January 2008. Along with the Child Welfare Act, the data content of the national child welfare statistics was also renewed. The content of the renewed child welfare statistics was planned and the decisions on its content were made by a working group with representatives from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities, the Centre of Expertise on Social Welfare in Southern Finland, Helsinki and Vantaa from the six largest cities in Finland, and Stakes (predecessor of THL at the time). In the Register of Child Welfare, the amendments mainly affected the details of the placement location, while the compilation of statistics on open care activities in child welfare was reformed completely. 

The amendments made to the compilation of the statistics along with the Child Welfare Act (2008) are available to read in the quality descriptions of the statistical reports for the period 2010–2014. 

This statistical report is based on the child welfare information municipalities have reported to THL for the statistical year 2020. Previously published child welfare information has been verified and updated according to the corrections submitted by municipalities. 

When the statistics for 2020 were drawn up, the placement information for the period 2008–2020 was corrected with the Digital and Population Data Services Agency’s data on deaths. In some cases, municipalities have not ended the placement periods of deceased persons in THL’s register and these corrections cause small changes in the register for the period 2008–2019. 

When drawing up the statistics for 2020, the placement information submitted by municipalities for the period 2016–2020 was corrected for all placement periods in which the placement location had been person's own home (at parents’). The placement periods were amended to end on the person's 18th birthday.  The correction for the period 2016–2018 has been made only for the young people whose placement would still continue in 2020.  For the period 2019–2020, the correction has been implemented for everyone. For years, it has been advised in the instructions that such periods should not be reported as placements. 

Clarity and consistency

The statistical report contains the information on children and young people placed outside the home and the number of child welfare clients in open care for the entire country.

Special issues in the Child welfare 2023 statistical report

The data on children and young people placed in care in 2023 was confirmed by all municipalities in Finland (the number of municipalities was 309 in 2023).

Although the municipalities also provided the statistical part concerning open care in child welfare in 2023, the quality of this information varied quite a lot and was partly inadequate. The changes in information systems and personnel that followed the introduction of the wellbeing services counties continued to affect the statistical data for 2023, making it difficult to provide data for statistical purposes in some places.

As the statistics were completed, key population data for 2023 were not available. The preliminary data of Statistics Finland available in December 2023 were used in the population proportions. The number of clients in services for families with children was proportional to the number of families with children in 2022. Data on the number of children born in 2023 was unavailable.

THL’s Register of Child Welfare makes corrections to the data as described in more detail in finnish in the section ”Tietojen oikeellisuus ja tarkkuus". However, making these corrections has failed for some municipalities. The processing was revised in spring 2023, and the change brought forward nearly 2,000 final dates of placements within a 15-year period. In relative terms, the change has the greatest impact on the placements of people over the age of 18, as the corrections resulted in concluding a large number of open care and after-care placement periods that may have also continued after the person’s 18th birthday. The retrospective corrections have also been made in the Sotkanet indicators, for instance. However, a comparison of numbers with the previous year's statistical report should be avoided, as the figures are not comparable due to the correction.

There are errors in the data concerning children placed outside their homes in Espoo in the period 2020–2023. For more information, see in finnish ”Tietojen oikeellisuus ja tarkkuus".