JHL (04.08.2015 - Heikki Jokinen) A citizens’ initiative called Dignified Old Age demands legislation to guarantee an adequate number of places in institutional care facilities for elderly people. Citizens’ initiative is a system that enables a minimum of 50,000 Finnish citizens of voting age to submit an initiative to the Parliament to enact a piece of legislation.
The initiative says that current Finnish legislation allows municipalities to limit institutional care and replace it with home care. This results not only in problems with the level of care but also higher costs for the older people themselves.
Those behind the initiative; Kirsti Leskenmaa - a JHL member - from Riihimäki and Anneli Koivunen from Tuusula present detailed changes to the existing Act on Supporting the Functional Capacity of the Older Population and on Social and Health Care Services for Older Persons.
They demand an adequate number of places in institutional care in all Finnish municipalities and also suitably sufficient, competent personnel. These demands should be written clearly into the law.
The Trade Union for the Public and Welfare Sectors JHL urges their members to sign the initiative.
It needs 50,000 signatures in order to proceed to the Parliament. The collection of signatures began two months ago and at the moment there are 6 800 signatures. The timeline to collect signatures will end at the end of November.
The citizens’ initiative as an instrument for bringing about changes in legislation (should parliament agree with the proposals) began in March 2012. So far there have been 389 citizens' initiatives. Out of these 332 failed to collect enough signatures and six have been submitted to Parliament. One has been accepted by Parliament, the proposal for gender neutral marriage.