Municipalities play a key role in the promotion of immigrant integration and they mainly do this by ensuring comprehensive basic public services. Like all other residents, immigrants also need for example early childhood education, basic education and training services. Housing and leisure services are also important to immigrants integrating into Finnish society.
Under the Act on the Promotion of Immigrant Integration, municipalities are primarily responsible for the following tasks:
- coordination of responsibility for the development, planning and monitoring of integration at local level;
- ensuring that municipal services also suit the needs of the immigrants;
- ensuring that the measures and services referred to in the act are arranged in accordance with the demand for them in the municipality; and
- ensuring the development of the expertise of their own personnel as part of integration.
- drawing up an integration plan for an unaccompanied under-age child who has been issued with a residence permit, together with the child, wellbeing services county and representative of the child.
The TE office or a municipality may also initiate an initial assessment for other immigrants who request it, if they are deemed to need one. The integration plan may also be drawn up by the municipality and the immigrant or the TE office and the immigrant if there are grounds for doing so.
In local government pilots, municipalities are partly responsible for providing employment services (TE services) in their area. The target group also includes immigrants and foreign-language speakers who either are unemployed or participate in employment services offered by TE Offices.
If necessary, the municipality may also draw up an integration plan with the child or young person and an integration plan for the family.
Read more:
Act on the Promotion of Immigrant Integration (finlex.fi)
Services promoting integration
