Integration gets started quickly when guidance and advice services are available and meet the needs of different language groups and people who have immigrated for different reasons.
Under the Integration Act (section 10), municipalities shall arrange general guidance and advice to immigrants and integration customers. Advice provision is intended to support the initial stage of integration in particular.
Where necessary, the municipality provides the immigrant with information on Finnish society, the service system and the system of education, working life and immigrants’ rights and obligations in Finland. The objective is that immigrants who have moved to Finland for various reasons have equal access to information and advice on the most important issues related to settling-in, integration and Finnish working life, at a minimum. Guidance and advice also allows municipalities more comprehensively to reach the immigrants residing in their area and to promote their referral, when necessary, to the assessment of skills and the need for integration services as well as services promoting integration and other services.
Municipalities are responsible for the adequate provision of personal guidance and advice to immigrants in its area. Guidance and advice may be provided from dedicated service points or as a part of the municipality’s other services, for example in the context of general advisory services. Municipalities may also enter into various kinds of collaboration arrangements to provide guidance and advice in an area larger than an individual municipality.
Even though under the Integration Act, it is the duty of the municipality specifically to arrange general guidance and advice, the Administrative Procedure Act imposes on other authorities, too, a general obligation to provide advice in matters falling within their competence. An authority shall, within its competence, provide its customers, as necessary, with advice on dealing with administrative matters and respond to questions and enquiries concerning the use of its services. Advice shall be provided free of charge. If a matter does not fall within the competence of an authority, it shall seek to refer the customer to the competent authority, in practice the competent authority’s service point or channel. The authorities central to promoting integration and settling in include the wellbeing services counties, the Finnish Immigration Service, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela), the occupational safety and health authorities and the Tax Administration.
To guide and advise immigrants and to inform them of services, flexible and evolving ways of working and efficient cooperation between the authorities and other actors such as CSOs are also required. The availability of basic public services and the identification of immigrants’ service needs vary depending on municipality of residence and the competence of those working in these services.
A range of models for arranging guidance and advice provision has been created both regionally and locally. When arranging these services, it is important to cater for the varying needs of immigrants and to take into account aspects including the low-threshold principle, the provision of services in multiple languages and in easy Finnish, and cooperation with other authorities and education providers. The guidance and advice provided in basic public services is complemented by the low-threshold advisory services of other actors. Such low-threshold guidance and advice provision has been subject to development in recent years in a bid to improve its accessibility. The smooth flow of customers’ service processes may be further enhanced through closer cooperation among the authorities central to integration and settling in. Centralising the guidance and advice provided by multiple authorities into a single multisectoral service point, for example, may deliver many kinds of benefits to customers and the authorities alike.
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