Instructor, Children’s Home for Disability Services

Hello, are you our new colleague? We are looking for an instructor with a university of applied sciences degree for a fixed-term position at the Children’s Home for Disability Services from 2 November 2026 to 31 August 2027. The Children’s Home for Disability Services provides short-term care services for children and young people for families in Helsinki. Children and young people come to us during caregivers’ leave or other situations affecting families. We provide short-term and urgent short-term care as round-the-clock residential services. We also provide fixed-term periods of demanding multidisciplinary support for underage Helsinki residents. Our goal is to support families and close ones and help every child and young person grow, develop and participate. Our unit consists of four small group homes for children and young people of different ages. Each employee has their own home group and close team, but we cooperate closely across the group homes and are one shared workplace community. Our strengths include good colleagues, working together, strong expertise and the everyday successes of children and young people. We are looking for a development-minded, proactive and warm-hearted professional interested in working with children and young people who need special support. We hope you have skills in augmentative and alternative communication methods and understand the needs of neurodivergent children and young people. We value good cooperation and interaction skills, the ability to work in changing situations and a willingness to develop our work together with the community. What will your duties include? As an instructor, you will be part of a multidisciplinary workplace community combining client work, a guiding approach, planning and network cooperation. Your work will focus on planning and guiding purposeful everyday life for children and young people, work that promotes rehabilitation, and supporting staff in achieving clients’ individual goals. Together with other staff, you will coordinate short-term care periods, support the implementation of client plans, and plan and arrange introductory visits for new clients. You will plan and develop activities that support children’s and young people’s participation, well-being and functional ability together with the workplace community, and cooperate closely with homes, schools, social work, healthcare and other networks. The work also includes strengthening clients’ communication, participation and self-determination, administering medication according to your competence and authorisations, and participating in unit development, quality assurance and support for staff competence. The work involves two shifts, mainly on weekdays and especially morning and daytime shifts. We support well-being at work and the balancing of work and free time, for example through ergonomic shift planning. Our workplace community follows safer-space principles to ensure a respectful, equal and pleasant community for everyone. In addition to interesting and varied work, we offer extensive training and development opportunities. As a city employee, you can apply for rental housing from Auroranlinna, whose apartments are more affordable than market-rate housing and whose application process gives employees’ applications priority. Because life is about more than work, we also support work-life balance. You will receive the Epassi Flex package, including sports, culture, commuting and well-being benefits. The benefit can be up to 550 euros per calendar year. The available balance depends on the length of your employment. You will also have a lunch benefit. As an employee benefit, you can also use a city bike and, if you wish, visit the city employees’ own recreational island. Eligibility requirement: A university of applied sciences degree suitable for social services under section 8 of the Act on Social Welfare Professionals (817/2015), for example a Bachelor of Social Services or rehabilitation counsellor, or a community educator qualification. Registration in the professional register of the Finnish Supervisory Agency (formerly Valvira) is required for the position, except for community educators. The language requirement is good spoken and written Finnish and satisfactory spoken Swedish. The position requires vaccination protection under section 48 of the Communicable Diseases Act and a tuberculosis assessment under section 55. A criminal-record extract must be presented for work with children (Act on Checking the Criminal Background of Persons Working with Children 504/2002). The selected applicant must provide the employer with a certificate concerning a drug test before employment begins. Before the selection decision, the applicant must provide an occupational health assessment of their ability to perform the duties. We also require good teamwork skills, the ability to work under pressure and personal suitability for the position. Experience in disability services is an advantage, especially in demanding disability services such as intellectual disability psychiatry, round-the-clock residential services, or services for children and young people. We value skills in augmentative and alternative communication methods (AAC), knowledge of intellectual disability psychiatry, and experience working with networks and families. Knowledge of the Apotti system used in social services is also considered an advantage. We also hope you are ready and motivated to support the workplace community, take responsibility for shared everyday processes, participate in developing operations and promote good practices. We value diversity and equality in our workplace communities. We welcome applicants of different ages and genders, applicants with disabilities, and people belonging to language, cultural and other minorities. We aim to ensure an accessible recruitment process for all applicants. If you need adjustments during the application process or have accessibility-related requests, you can contact us by email at sotepe.monimuotoinen.rekrytointi@hel.fi. Messages are handled separately from the recruiting unit, and contacts are not forwarded to the recruiting manager without the applicant’s consent.