Ombrelo provides bilingual service in Ostrobothnia

Ombrelo operates on the west coast from Raahe to Rauma and offers its bilingual services in Ostrobothnia and Central Ostrobothnia. At Ombrelo, there are currently about 20 Swedish-speaking or bilingual speech therapists, whom you can get to know on the company’s website. The company also employs, among others, a bilingual neurotherapist.

Quality over quantity is Ombrelo’s motto

High-quality client work is the top priority at Ombrelo. To support this, concrete benchmarks have been created. One of these is that therapists may have a maximum of 16 client appointments per week. There is no minimum requirement for the number of client appointments.

“It feels good to be able to spend time on clients and to have an employer who encourages that. It allows me to focus on providing high-quality client work, because I’m not under pressure to fill my workday with as many clients as possible,” says speech therapist Anne-Marie Burman.

“Returning to work from parental leave is, for example, smooth, since there is no minimum number of client appointments. A flexible return to work also helps maintain professional competence,” adds speech therapist Cecilia Talus.

Ombrelo gives every employee a training budget that can be used freely for any additional or continuing education they wish.

“The size of the training budget is determined by workload, but the time spent on training is not limited in any way, which means an employee can study as many hours or days as they want over, for example, a year. You can choose training according to your own interests,” explains speech therapist Marie Nyberg.

When the speech therapists working in Vaasa are asked about their job satisfaction, they all give the same answer.

“The work atmosphere strongly supports well-being, and your colleagues are there to help you,” summarizes speech therapist Eric Tommola, expressing everyone’s thoughts.

Speech therapists worry about clients’ access to therapy – the service voucher shifts responsibility to the client

At Ombrelo, there is shared concern about clients’ access to therapy. Not enough new speech therapists are graduating, and the service voucher model preferred by municipalities also shifts the responsibility for finding a therapist onto the client.

“Because it’s the client’s responsibility to find a therapist, only those who have enough energy and resources to search for a therapist receive care. For families with an immigrant background, the Finnish system is unfamiliar, and just learning how the system works can take a lot of energy,” says Burman with concern.

Especially for children, early access to therapy is crucial when it comes to speech and language development challenges. When you have to wait at every step on the way to getting therapy, the waiting time becomes unreasonable from the client’s point of view. At Ombrelo, the current situation regarding Swedish-language therapy services is good, and waiting lists are relatively short.

Beyond these challenges, the compensation speech therapists receive through the service voucher is always the same, regardless of the therapist’s education or experience. This does not encourage therapists to pursue further education, and if the service voucher model is not developed, this could, in the long term, lead to a decline in the quality of therapy work.

“This is a major challenge for the new wellbeing services counties, in addition to all the other challenges in the healthcare sector. Our hope is that by developing the compensation model for the service voucher, it will be possible to continue to guarantee high-quality therapy services and quick access to therapy for clients. Those who live farther from city centers are also in an unfair position because of where they live. This is because the compensation model for the service voucher does not encourage therapists to drive long distances to clients’ homes. By adjusting the model, we could ensure that people living outside urban areas also have equal access to therapy,” says Ombrelo’s founder Nina von Schantz.

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