I am Anni-Sofia Niittyvuopio, a 22-year-old Sámi influencer and reindeer herder from Karigasniemi.
I come from Karigasniemi and lived in Rovaniemi for four years as a student. I am currently the Chair of the Sámi Parliamentary Youth Council, an alternate delegate of the Utsjoki Municipal Council and a party delegate for the Left Alliance. I am also a member of the Utsjoki Vitality and Review Committees and have just been elected to a member of the Left Students Board.
I have almost ten years of experience in organisational activities, where I am especially familiar with the teaching and culture in and of the Sámi language. As the Chair of the Youth Council, I have also obtained solid experience in other fields, including social and healthcare.
I am a candidate in the regional elections so that our social and health services would remain to be ours. These services are about everyone’s right to health, care and security, regardless of wealth. Social and healthcare services are the services are needed by each and every one of us. At the same time, it is decided whether the professionals in the social and healthcare sector have the right to well-being at work and a salary to cope with.
Each of us is at the heart of social and healthcare services, and services should focus on employee retention and ensure equality for all customers.
I am willing to play my part in ensuring that everyday services are close to everyone, that personnel remuneration and working conditions are improved, that children and young people and preventive services are invested in, not forgetting the elderly and minorities such as the disabled, people from different cultural backgrounds.
Lapland’s services are special and diverse. Thus, diverse expert knowledge is needed to make everyone’s right to working conditions, access to services and an equal and dignified life a reality.
Election topics
Everyday services close to people
Lapland’s social and healthcare services are special and diverse. The starting point is that services shall be strengthened and increased. Any service should be kept close to people and should not be concentrated in large districts. Attention should be paid to linguistic accessibility in the services, in the languages spoken on both sides of the border in the border municipalities and in the Sámi languages in the Sámi Domicile Area. Services shall be strengthened through, among other things, ambulatory professionals and digital solutions. In less urgent cases, access to treatment should enabled within a week, if there is any risk to life, then immediately.
Remuneration and working conditions put in order
Lapland is also suffering from labour shortages in the social and healthcare sector and the need for personnel will increase further as the population ages. The labour shortage shall be addressed by increasing the amount of training and, in particular, by improving the remuneration and working conditions of social and healthcare specialists. In this way, we can take care of the personnel and keep the sector attractive. The welfare area should identify recruitment needs, develop work processes and improve working conditions. A substitution system should be developed, unjustified part-time work should be stopped and the development of employees as professionals in their field and mental and physical abilities should be ensured.
Support for families
Families should be supported from early childhood to teens. Parents should be offered any practical help to prevent their fatigue. Child poverty shall be prevented through free, due and preventive and supplementary subsistence benefit. Pupil and student care shall be provided in the everyday environment of children and young people, and increasing spending on child protection shall be restrained by preventing the need for services through early support, substance abuse and mental health services, and by preventing domestic violence. Moreover, efforts should be made to recruit and support foster families.