Abstract
This article analyses multi-professional knowledge creation in relation to the future of health and social services in Finland. The empirical data were collected from a workshop and it was carried out in cooperation between the representatives of higher education and working life. Workshop gave to its participants the possibility for multi-professional knowledge creation exercise to expand on future integrated health and social services. Participants saw digitalisation as enabling clients to use services and as offering more holistic help in incorporating clients' service histories and needs. The analytical framework is based on the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) and the knowledge creation approach, which directs attention to creation of the future object of client-centred services and knowledge artefacts by means of which future visions are collectively imagined and concretised. The activity-theoretical analysis of the elements of the envisioned service activity brought into daylight contradictions between the present and the future in terms of overcoming the siloed services and acknowledging the diversity of the clients' situations. These challenges may be difficult to grasp by means of a knowledge creation exercise alone. However, the realization of future activity requires solving the contradictions of the present service and care.
Highlights
Ageing populations, new flows of migration and the growing costs of welfare systems are among the issues European countries are addressing when trying to answer to the public demand for the equity of and access to safe, quality welfare services (European Federation of Nurses Associations, 2015)
The two research questions are: RQ1: What kind of future activity for the health and social care services do professionals envision mediated by the canvas knowledge creation artefact? RQ2: What are the expansive and contradictory connections of the future service activity produced in the knowledge creation exercise?
The results present our interpretation of the multi-professional group's discussion undertaken as a knowledge creation exercise to envision future activity for health and social care services
Summary
New flows of migration and the growing costs of welfare systems are among the issues European countries are addressing when trying to answer to the public demand for the equity of and access to safe, quality welfare services (European Federation of Nurses Associations, 2015). The political processing of service system reform aims at managing challenges within the public health and social care system by transferring the responsibility for the organization of services from local and municipal au thorities to larger units of service providers. This way, politicians claim to ensure resources for capacity building and to tackle increased costs. The developments on both the international and national levels challenge the multi-professional health and social. From the perspective of the professionals, this has significant consequences for their collaborative practices and KC
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