Case Study : Experts-by-Experience in Finnish Social Welfare

Abstract

Finland—a Nordic welfare state with a history of strong public service provision and tight collaborative ties with the public and the third sector—adopted a strong participatory emphasis in its public governance outlines when entering the 21st century. Resulting from this participatory norm, public and third sector social welfare organisations were tasked with finding 'new and innovative ways' to include citizens in the design and production of social services. One of the most popular innovations was a new concept of expertise-by-experience. Drawing on examples from the UK and Denmark, mental health Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) started to recruit former service users as new experts, performing varying co-creation and co-production tasks in social services. Expertise-by-experience is a practice that has been employed and developed in projects carried out by both NGOs and public sector organisations. The experiences of experts-by-experience show how co-production schemes have a potential to select their participants.