Collaboration has a remarkable impact to resilience of people working in disability services
Authors: Valtokari Maria , Korhonen Anna Väre Marika , Nurmi-Koikkalainen Päivi 
Published: January 2024

Background: In the shadow of COVID-19-pandemic the shortage of social services’ and health care workers resilience of workers is an important paradigm to consider. Occupational wellbeing consists of many factors like work community, collaboration, solidarity, occupational health care, flexibility, salary, and different compensations. Collaboration and good possibilities to influence in work allow better occupational wellbeing and resilience.

For e.g., housing services for persons with disabilities, collaboration may be one thing which can affect the whole community. COVID-19-pandemic’s lockdown measures combined with shortage of employees, collaboration with different partners may be a key factor that supports surviving and resilience of clients and workers. The study is part of “Building the future based on experiences during COVID-19” -project funded by the European Social Fund.

Aim: The aim of the research was to find out how respondents feel the coronavirus epidemic has affected work, the workplace, and the work community and what new practices have been introduced in the workplace in areas such as the way services are organized. The survey and interviews examined the changes in the everyday lives of people with disabilities as observed by the workers and managers. Also of interest are the measures and methods adopted in the services to prevent coronavirus infections and communication between customers and workers during the coronavirus epidemic.

Methods: Study methods used are survey for people working in services for the persons with disabilities and thematic interviews for managers working in service housing, or group housing for persons with disabilities. The survey results were analyzed by descriptive, quantitative analyze and interviews were analyzed by thematic, qualitative analyze.

Results: Collaboration is an valuable asset of workplaces. The resilience and wellbeing among/of workers, customers, managers and the whole community can be supported by emphasizing collaboration culture in organizations. E.g. customers may get better access to COVID-19 testing or different daytime activities in a lockdown situation. Workers and managers can benefit e. g. colleagues’ collective aid. Without collaboration the situation may be that organization, workers, managers, and customers have been on their own in COVID-19 era.

Conclusions: Collaboration is valuable to customers, workers, and managers. In paradigm of collaboration there is inequality between customers, workers, and managers. The amount of collaboration between different organizations may vary. Further research is needed for tackling problems such as inequality and shortage of social services and health care workers and people working in services for the persons with disabilities. One solution may be collaboration with e.g. social and health care sector, third sector and local vocational schools. Research which considers workers and managers own opinion, voice and institutional problems may also be one part of solution because it gives different views to the problem.

Keywords: Workers, managers, disability services, persons with disabilities, Finland, COVID-19