Policy-makers in social services in Finland: the municipality and the state

Finland has been a latecomer in its development of social services. Nevertheless, during the 1970s and 1980s, it constructed a wide-ranging system of social services. This is a result of cooperation, but also of inter-administrational struggle between central and local government. The provision of Finnish social services has been the responsibility of self-governing local municipalities, although it is subsidized and controlled by the state. The proportion of state financing has increased remarkably during the last decades, but the municipalities still finance half of their social service expenditure themselves. The economic recession of the 1990s has led to a restructuring of the Finnish model of social services, but local government will evidently remain at the center of decision-making on social service provision.