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Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the pandemic and post-pandemic healthcare malfunctions in the Helsinki metropolitan area, Finland. The malfunctions have become a full scale crisis during the autumn of 2022. The presentation gives preliminary results from a research project based on photovoice method.

Paper long abstract:

The focus of the research is on employees performing vital COVID-19 related jobs: providing individual care to vulnerable clients in both organisational and home settings. We examine how diverse people (in Finland, Canada, Scotland/UK and South Africa) who work/have worked in formal and informal care address challenges by collaboratively examining their ideas to ease risks and develop opportunities to deliver and receive care. Specifically, we will analyse how care workers in precarious positions (women, LGBTI2SQ people, and migrant status or minority ethnic people) are experiencing COVID-19 crises in their work, and how they see a post-pandemic future.

Despite the relative success of the measures against COVID-19 in Finland, many long-term effects of the pandemic are visible. Waiting times in the public health care were already very long and this situation was worsened by the pandemic. During the worst months of the pandemic, emergency laws were applied enabling, for instance, the employer to decide unilaterally about the holidays of their employees. Employers and employees have repeatedly discussed salaries and compensation with care workers, often with the employees left unsatisfied. In 2022, the nurses’ unions have organised large strikes and there are fears that many care workers are overworked and plan to change occupation or retire early.

In the project, care personnel with foreign background take photos of their working life and, if they wish, make an exhibition of their photos. Group and individual interviews are conducted in different stages of the project.