📋 Tender Overview
The Social Welfare Act is the most important general act regulating social welfare activities. The Act lays down provisions on the promotion of social security and wellbeing as well as on the tasks and services that fall under the responsibility of the wellbeing services counties and their implementation. The law applies to all clients from children to the elderly. The guide, updated in May 2024, takes into account the legislative amendments that entered into force on 1 January 2024.
The Social Welfare Act entered into force in 2015 and has since been supplemented and amended numerous times. In recent years, the most significant such partial reforms have been, for example, the reform of services for older people and the reform of mental health and substance abuse services. In addition, several technical amendments were made to the Social Welfare Act in connection with the structural reform of healthcare and social welfare services in 2023.
One of the objectives of Prime Minister Petteri Orpo's Government Programme is to reform the Social Welfare Act during the government term. Due to numerous legislative amendments at different times, updating the Guide to the Application of the Social Welfare Act to the situation at the beginning of 2024 has been seen as a necessary and justified measure. The guide is intended for work carried out in social welfare service activities.
The updated guide reviews the current provisions of the Social Welfare Act, explaining their interpretation mainly through the texts of various government proposals. The guide was last updated in 2017.
