Research Council of Finland awards nearly €800,000 to the CoWest project on Children’s and young people’s wellbeing

The Research Council of Finland has awarded nearly €800,000 in funding to the CoWest research project, which aims to strengthen effective and integrated services for children, young people and families with children in Southwest Finland and Western Uusimaa. The funding was granted under a new funding instrument designed to enhance collaboration between universities and wellbeing services counties.

CoWest is a joint research project of the University of Turku and the wellbeing services counties of Southwest Finland and Western Uusimaa. The project focuses on strengthening register-based research on integrated social, healthcare and education services and on producing evidence on how service systems promote the health and wellbeing of children, young people and families with children.

Just over €200,000 of the total funding is allocated to the research component led by Academy Research Fellow Katri Aaltonen at the INVEST Research Centre. The project is led by Professor of Social Work Johanna Kallio at the University of Turku, who also works in the joint IVAR research programme of INVEST and the Wellbeing Services County of Southwest Finland.

CoWest has three core objectives:
a) to strengthen register-based research of integrated social, healthcare and education services;
b) to produce evidence on how service systems promote health and wellbeing; and
c) to promote transdisciplinary research–practice co-creation that supports knowledge management and practical service development in Southwest Finland and Western Uusimaa.

The project provides a framework for register-based research by integrating data mined from regional information systems in social services, primary healthcare and education with national datasets. The resulting data infrastructure addresses regional knowledge management needs by supporting the development of indicators related to the organization and effectiveness of services.

The regional database created within the project enables longitudinal and comparative research beyond the scope of CoWest itself, even before national data sources become available. In the future, new research projects can be connected to the database, which constitutes a novel type of register dataset from an international perspective.