The City of Helsinki’s support families are volunteer families who have the time, willingness and ability to support a child and a family in need. A support family can be a couple or a single person, a family with children or a child-free family. A support family provides the child with reliable and secure relationships. No special skills are required from the support family; spending time together living a normal everyday life is enough.
Support families are trained for the operations. Participation in the free training is not a commitment to the operations. The training will give you the opportunity to consider whether support family activities are a right form of volunteering for you. The family's suitability for the job will be reviewed and assessed during the training process. The support family service workers will provide you with the details on the contents of the training and the date and time of the next training event.
The support family service is intended for children who are in need of special support or for clients of child welfare services. Support families help families when their own resources are limited and when the family does not have its own close support network. When the child is with the support family, their parent has the opportunity to rest and gather resources for their day-to-day life. Typically, a child spends one weekend a month with their support family. The children in need of support are usually between the ages of 2 and 13.
Frequently asked questions about support family operations
Each child is matched with a support family that best meets their needs. When matching the child with the support family, the support family's own wishes and capabilities are also taken into account. After the introduction, the child usually spends one weekend a month with the support family. During these weekends, the support families do normal, everyday things while taking the child’s wishes into consideration: they go outside, or play or cook together, for example.
These supportive relationships are fixed-term in nature and their continuation is evaluated annually.
The support family does not need to have an educational background from the fields of social services or healthcare or any other specialised skills. The support family is required to have a stable life situation and the resources to be supportive of the child in need and their family, as well as the ability to create a secure relationship with the child. Additionally, they need to be openminded and willing to cooperate and commit to the operations. The growth environment provided by the support family must be child-friendly.
The family's suitability for the job will be reviewed and assessed during the training process. Before a family gets started in the operations, a statement on the family will be requested from the local social services, and the adults living in the family must present an extract from their criminal records in order to work with children.
Obstacles to becoming a support family include acute, repeated or long-term client relationship with child welfare services or family social work, or an acute substance abuse or mental health problem in the family. An ongoing crisis in your own life (e.g. burnout, divorce, recent unemployment, financial problems, serious illness of a close relative, etc.) or a serious illness in the family may also prevent you from being a support family at that time. Families involved in a criminal lifestyle cannot become support families.
In addition to filling in the application form, the support family training includes one visit to the home of the future support family and three group coaching sessions. Group coaching takes place on weekday evenings 16:30-19:00.
Support family activities are organised and supported by professionals of the social services sector. Support families are paid a care allowance and a reimbursement of expenses for the weekends they have the child with them. In 2025, the care allowance is €51.10 per day per child and the reimbursement of expenses €28.06 per day per child. Support families are insured and are provided with additional training and a chance to participate in peer-to-peer meetings when participating in the operations.