Child welfare notification

Making a child welfare notification

A contact or a notification launches an assessment of service needs during which employees from Soite meet family members together and separately and meet parties that the family knows from before. The purpose of the work is to find out what kind of help and support the family needs and what kind of services would help the family.

You can contact or make a child welfare notification to the emergency social services around the clock by phone or online via DigiSoite’s Omapalvelu-service:

A contact is when the family itself contacts or a party cooperating with the family contacts with the family’s consent. A child welfare notification is when the family has not given its consent.

An anticipatory child welfare notification

An anticipatory child welfare notification is made before the child’s birth. An anticipatory child welfare notification must always be made if there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the child that is going to be born will need child welfare support measures immediately after birth. 

An anticipatory child welfare notification must be made in situations where the person making the notification has reliable information about, for example, a substance abuse problem, a serious mental health disorder or a custodial sentence of a future mother or father.

An anticipatory child welfare notification is made by calling Soite’s emergency social services

Objectives and purpose of an anticipatory child welfare notification

• to secure adequate support measures for the expectant mother and future family already during pregnancy
• gives rise to an obligation to provide social work even before the child is born
• the necessary services can be planned in advance together with the parents
• a child welfare notification must be made if the person making the notification has definite information about a substance abuse problem, a mental health problem or a custodial sentence of a future mother or father.
• the service provided to parents is social work for adults
• social work in child welfare services begins when the child is born.

An anticipatory child welfare notification is made in social work for adults in cooperation with the assessment team in family social work.

• All support given to parents before the child is born is health care service or adult social work.
• The social services that are needed immediately after the child has been born can be assessed and planned in cooperation with a social worker.