Abstract:

Finland is currently undergoing social and health care reform and the law preparation is under way currently. This means that in the near future Finland will be going through a huge health, social services and regional government reform. This reform will also change operational environment in both secondary vocational education and higher education.

At present, Finland’s health care system is publicly funded by the local communities. The reform aims to change this funding to the bigger counties. The objective of the health, social services and regional government reform is to produce more efficient services and increase equality in healthcare. The reason for such a reform is the hard economic situation that Finland will face in the future. With ageing population, there will be a need for more individualized and equal services with less taxes to spend. The reform challenges everyone on the fields of healthcare and social services to think new ways to produce services.

In Laurea University of Applied Sciences the main challenge is to discuss deeply about the contents and the way of implementation of the degree programs and adapt them to suit for the new requirements of the changing operational environment. Strong integration of different lines of businesses and sectors is the reform’s main theme. This requires new ways of thinking from the educators.

With three workshop sessions and different methods of co-creation and service design, Laurea was able to create four focus points and a vision of the future. The vision which was created in the workshops will be a guideline for all decision making. Focus points are more pragmatic and guides the everyday life in the classrooms. Notable aspect of this project is that two of the three workshops were facilitated by Laurea’s Master degree students.

Main goal in the first workshop was to discover and fine the goal where Laurea is aiming to be when the reform is being made. Laurea aims to co-create health and social services for Uusimaa region with a human-centered approach. These health and social services will be diverse, human-centered, fluent, collaborative, preventative, transparent, equal, efficient and enhancing. Between first and second workshop session the project group discussed on their meeting about:
1) how contents of education and
2) knowledge of the personnel should be improved to be able to respond to the demands caused by the reform.

In the second workshop concentrated to Laurea’s vision and the bigger picture. This workshop produced new vision for Laurea’s health and social services branch but also four new focus points. This vision will be launched in August 2017. After the launch, it will be implemented through various workshops. The third workshop continued the work with more practical approach. In the beginning of the workshop the new vision was refined and after that the group created an action matrix for upcoming tasks. This matrix showed some light to actual tasks which must be done to meet the aim.

After the third workshop work continues according to the action matrix. The project group stays responsible for this project and its implementation and results.

Keywords:

Co-creation, Co-development, Higher Education, Social and Health Care Reform, Workshop.