Day care providers in Helsinki are finding it hard to provide for the increasing numbers of children who speak languages other than Finnish and Swedish. They say they’d like to see this diversity reflected in their staff, but are stumped by the difficulty of hiring foreign-language workers.
Currently 16 percent of three to six year-old daycare charges in Helsinki do not speak Finnish or Swedish as their native language. However just 5.5 percent of city daycare workers are non- Finnish or Swedish speakers.
Foreign-language workers a valuable resource
"Workers with immigrant backgrounds are a major resource and we have a lot of foreign-language kids in our early childhood education programmes. For this reason it would be good to have foreign-language employees as well," said Raila Tiainen-Ala-Maunus, head of Helsinki’s early childhood education department.
According to the city official, one hiring hiccup has been the fact that officials cannot cherry-pick foreign-background staffers for positions in certain daycare centres.
"In job vacancy ads we can indicate that the daycare is multicultural, but of course jobseekers can apply for positions in any daycare they choose," she noted.
Another problem is the strict insistence on Finnish-language skills. The early childhood education department continues to require Finnish language skills from city daycare workers.
"The emphasis is now that we are looking to offer daycare apprenticeships to immigrant-background students," she concluded.
Tiainen-Ala-Maunus did not indicate whether or not there were any plans afoot to relax the Finnish language proficiency requirement for daycare workers.