Prison and Probation Service of Finland winner of CEP Award

Em­ployee-Ori­ented Learn­ing Process de­vel­oped by the Prison and Pro­ba­tion Ser­vice of Fin­land won the De­vel­op­ment of Na­tional Pro­ba­tion Ser­vices Award pre­sented by the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Eu­ro­pean Pro­ba­tion CEP. Head of Unit Pia Ylikomi and Se­nior Spe­cial­ist Ti­ina Vogt-Airaksi­nen ac­cepted the award in the CEP Gen­eral As­sem­bly in Dubrovnik, Croa­tia on 19 Oc­to­ber 2022.

The Confederation of European Probation CEP presents Probation Awards to celebrate outstanding contributions to probation work. The award winners help to promote the reintegration of probation clients into society and develop professionalism in probation work. There are five different categories of awards, which have been presented since 2016.

− We are very proud that the Finnish probation work and its development get wide international recognition. We are overjoyed at the award and hope that the process we introduced can also benefit other European probation authorities, Pia Ylikomi and Tiina Vogt-Airaksinen said.

The award-winning Employee-Oriented Learning Process was created as part of the development of the client work in the probation offices in Finland. The learning process and the related coaching carried out by staff supervisors strengthens the staff’s common concept of the client work and its guidance. Staff members of all units and staff groups of the Finnish Prison and Probation Service took part in the process.

In addition to Ylikomi and Vogt-Airaksinen, the work group that developed the process consisted of Tiina Ihanus, Sanna Kohvakka and Paula Stenroos. In their work, they utilized the coaching client work created by Annina Vilkas.

Themes selected based on staff members’ skills and interests

At the beginning of the process, the staff members assess their own competence and based on that, have a discussion with their designated supervisor. The aim of the discussion is to recognise the strengths and weaknesses of each staff member and choose three areas of client work the staff members focus on with clients.

The actual independent learning process begins when the staff members prepare the tasks selected from the chosen areas of client work and carry them out with clients. After that, the staff members present what they learnt to their own work teams. The team discussions helped them to understand and learn together and giving and receiving feedback became a natural part of the process of developing their competence.

− Going through even familiar themes was considered useful and inspired the staff members. In addition, the staff members of the probation offices noticed that there were various tools available, even more than what they had assumed. As we developed the process, we were able to compile an extensive databank that is easy to access and that provides content and tools for probation work. We also wrote a handbook for supervisors to support their work, Ylikomi and Vogt-Airaksinen told.

Finland received another CEP award as a Finnish research group of Jukka Leinonen, Henrik Linderborg and Janne Vepsäläinen came third in the CEP Research Award category with their research on community sanctions. Their research is called Use of community service, monitoring sentence and community service imposed as an ancillary sanction to conditional imprisonment in the penal system. It focuses on how the work of the authorities involved in the criminal justice system can be developed so that the basis of the criminal policy, i.e., community sanctions should be the first choice and imprisonment the last resort, is realised.

Further information:
Head of Unit Pia Ylikomi, pia.ylikomi(a)om.fi