Friday, May 3^rd, 2002, 13,30 h.: visit to the last center of the trip to Finland. Ufff! We are really very tired.

We have visited, got to know and exchanged ideas in different types of cities, with different professionals, in the mornings, in the afternoons... we already know how the services for children under 7 function, which professionals work in them, the schedules they have, the number of adults per groups, the type of buildings...we started on Monday and today is Friday and our group has to see the center "Lappi".

Our guide/companion Pasi carries us around with infinite patience ¿All of you are still coming?- she questions, turning her head back, every now and then.

We are in Helsinki, in one of its neighbourhoods, and we arrive at a first floor organized in an L-form. The warm materials are here, once again-we cannot forget them- Nordic design!, the purple and orange colours together even in the bath towels, the house’s environment, the sofas present in the "classrooms" that do not look like classrooms, in the kitchen where five girls are eating accompanied by three adults, in some productions (paintings, letters, messages) on the walls, on the toys, the corners, the washrooms, the rooms to sleep with the beds, which we have already seen somewhere else, with three different sizes (as the beds of the three bears, the person from Granada says...) … there is not much difference with the services that we have seen up to now, maybe they lack some plants and/or natural materials, maybe there’s not so many productions hung on the walls.

But not! Alert! Which are the families that can to access Lappi? Only those families that have UNUSUAL labour schedules.

Obviously, we do not understand. What does this mean?
- ¡Pasi! Explain this to us!- we require.
- ¡Pepa! Translate!!!!! - we claim-

And Pasi, with her already mentioned infinite patience, tries to do so. This is a specific service for the families that have unusual labouring schedules, night jobs, above all linked to the great industry of the ships, cruisers, ferries, etc. In the whole of Helsinki there are only 9 centers like this one. Each center attends approximately some 50 children. Not everyone who has night or unusual jobs uses these services. But if both members of a couple work in the same job, or the family is a single-parent one and does not have any other option, it is then when these services make some sense.

They are open 24 hours a day, all year round. During the day they work as any other services we have seen. Some families use these center until 9 pm, coinciding with their shifts at work. Other families bring their children in the afternoon (before 9 pm) and these remain here to sleep.

When their families have a day off they keep the children with them. Not all the situations are equal. But since this is a service for unusual working hours, it adapts to all the possible variations.
They try to anticipate, with a week of notice, the changes of shifts.

Its cost is identical to that of the other services as per the contribution of the families. Its cost, as per real maintenance from the municipality, is highest due to the 24 hours’ shifts. At night, the professionals are nurses. During the "school" schedule the professionals are the same as in the other centers, this is to say early education teachers, social pedagogues and nurses.

-What if the boy or girl gets sick?- we asked with anxiety.

Pasi looks at us and reminds us: -in Finland the parents get three days off if their child is ill -.

-And the center’s organization?-

- It is very adjusted, it weekly adapts to the unusual working shifts of the parents- she answers.

Pasi and our translator Pepa Alcrudo insist in remembering us that this is not a social service.
But it is, instead, an educational service that contemplates the social reality of an increasing labour sector linked to persons with unusual schedules. That not all the sector uses the service, but that some of it does indeed need it (some 500 children in a population of 890.000 inhabitants approximately) and that, therefore, these children have the right.

How easy and how difficult!

We obviously leave thinking. Though we already knew about some Danish/Swedish proposals in this sense, it does not stop to surprise us when we see it directly.

Is this the Welfare state?

Is this flexibility, is it respect and children’s rights?

As the end of our visit it has turned out to be a magnificent dessert.