Performance evaluation of health and social services

We evaluate the availability of health and social services every other year. With this evaluation, we monitor, enforce and evaluate whether services are equally available everywhere in the country. We also look at regional differences in the availability of services.

The details of which things we examine in health and social services vary from one evaluation to the next. We collect information for these evaluations for instance with questionnaires that we send to local authorities. We use the evaluation findings to make suggestions about how to improve the services. 

Evaluating health and social services is a statutory duty of the Regional State Administrative Agency. The first evaluation was completed in 1996. Since 2013, we have been conducting evaluations every other year.

The 2021 evaluation

We published the 2021 evaluation of basic services in September 2022. In the evaluation, we highlighted topical challenges related to the organisation of different services as well as proposals for improving the quality and equality of these services. The evaluation was coordinated by the Regional State Administrative Agency for Northern Finland, and the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Education and Culture, the Center for Cultural Policy Research Cupore and the Ministry of the Interior participated in the cooperation. 

The 2021 performance evaluation of basic services focused on eights areas of evaluation:

  • adequacy and competence of staff in public libraries and management of libraries 
  • municipal resources for cultural activities and the availability and accessibility of cultural services 
  • the impact of user fees and booked times policy on equal and non-discriminatory accessibility of sports facilities
  • availability of municipal youth work
  • pre-primary education and access to complementary early childhood education and care
  • transport arrangements for pre-primary education and comprehensive education in accordance with the Basic Education Act
  • status of special needs education
  • rapid response by rescue services

Evaluation reports (publications 138-145, in finnish)

The 2019 evaluation

We published the 2019 evaluation of basic services in June 2020. The evaluation was coordinated by the Regional State Administrative Agency for Northern Finland. The evaluation focused nine areas of evaluation:

  • children communicating in sign language and children of deaf adults (CODA) in early childhood education and care and preschool
  • teaching in municipalities for children on child welfare placements
  • availability and resources of cultural services of local government
  • usability, accessibility and appropriateness of library facilities
  • physical accessibility of sports facilities 
  • sufficiency of local government services for adolescents
  • availability of veterinary services
  • availability of veterinary services (on call)
  • availability of monitoring of the health and wellbeing of animals
  • rapid response by rescue services.