Ombrelo serves Ostrobothnia in two languages
Ombrelo, which provides therapy services, serves both Finnish- and Swedish-speaking clients in Ostrobothnia.
On the west coast, from Raahe to Rauma, ombrelo provides bilingual services in the Ostrobothnia and Central Ostrobothnia regions. At the moment, there are around 20 Swedish-speaking or bilingual speech therapists working at ombrelo, and you can get to know them on ombrelo’s website. In addition, the company employs, among others, a bilingual neurotherapist.
Quality over quantity is ombrelo’s motto
At ombrelo, high-quality client work is the number one priority. To support this, concrete metrics have been created. One of these metrics is that therapists may have a maximum of 16 client sessions per week. No minimum number of client sessions has been defined.
“It’s nice to be able to spend time with clients and to be encouraged to do so by the employer. This way I can focus on high-quality client work, because I’m not under pressure to fit as many clients as possible into my days. Since there is no minimum number of client sessions, I have a lot of influence over my working hours and workload,” says speech therapist Anne-Marie Burman.
“For example, it’s easy to return to work flexibly after maternity leave, because there is no minimum number of client sessions. A flexible return to work also helps in maintaining one’s professional skills,” adds speech therapist Cecilia Talus.
At ombrelo, every employee also receives a training budget that can be freely used for any additional or continuing education they wish.
“The size of the training budget is determined by your workload, but the time spent on training is not restricted in any way. In other words, at ombrelo you can train as many hours or days as you want, for example over the course of a year. You can choose trainings based on your own interests,” explains speech therapist Marie Nyberg.
When speech therapists working in Vaasa are asked about how much they enjoy their work, the answer is unanimous.
“The work atmosphere supports well-being, and you can always get help from colleagues,” sums up speech therapist Eric Tommola, voicing everyone’s thoughts.
Speech therapists are concerned about clients’ access to therapy – the service voucher leaves responsibility to the client
At ombrelo, there is a shared concern about clients’ access to speech therapy. Not enough new speech therapists are graduating, and in addition, the service voucher model favored by municipalities leaves the responsibility for finding a therapist to the client.
“Because the responsibility for finding a therapist lies with the client, only those who have enough resources to search for a therapist end up receiving care. For families with an immigrant background, the Finnish system is new, and just becoming familiar with the system can consume what little resources they have,” worries Burman.
Especially for children with speech and language development challenges, early access to therapy is key. When there are waiting times at every stage of gaining access to therapy, the overall waiting time becomes unreasonable from the client’s point of view. At the moment, ombrelo is in a good situation regarding Swedish-language therapy services, and the queues are fairly short.
In addition to these challenges, the compensation for speech therapists under the service voucher is always the same, regardless of the therapist’s education or experience. This does not encourage therapists to pursue further training, which over the years may be reflected as a decline in the quality of therapy work if the service voucher model is not developed.
“This is of course a major challenge for the new wellbeing services counties, on top of all the other challenges in healthcare. We nevertheless hope that, for example by developing the compensation model for the service voucher, it will be possible in the future to guarantee high-quality therapy services and quick access to therapy for clients. People living further away from city centers are also in an unequal position because of where they live. This is because the current compensation model for the service voucher does not encourage driving long distances to clients. By adjusting the model, we could also ensure equal access to therapy for those who live further away from population centers,” concludes ombrelo’s founder Nina von Schantz.