Juha has been working for 10 years in the field of homelessness. He started as a frontline support worker in 2010 for the Finnish Youth housing association services (NALPA). NALPA offers housing first in scattered housing for young people experiencing homelessness. After 3,5 years Juha became the Service manager and his responsibility was to develop the services and manage the Housing First team. After 1,5 years of being the service manager Juha became the CEO of the whole company. Juha had the privilege of developing and growing the company to a widespread presence across Finland. Following NALPA, Juha started work at the Y-Foundation. He worked for a little over one year as a Coordinator for the  National Housing First Development Network. At the beginning of 2020, he became the Lead Coordinator of the same Network. As part of his role at the Network, Juha organises training courses at national level, and is working on developing the Housing First model together with dozens of NGO’s and cities.

Mia is Coordinator for the National Housing First Development Network in Finland. She is passionate about eradicating homelessness and developing new ways of approaching housing-related issues. Mia has a backround in youth housing, social services & child protection services and is also experience in networking, providing training and a platform for learning about Housing First and housing related social work.

Pilvi’s first experience working with people experiencing homelessness was in Scotland year 2005 where she worked as an assertive outreach worker for over two years, learning first-hand about people experiencing homelessness without Housing First support. After returning to Finland, Pilvi went to work with Helsinki Deaconess Institute in one of their newly opened Housing First units, providing supported living for long-term homeless people. There she learned the basic skills of the Housing First approach and community care and how people with similar backgrounds can empower each other with the support of skilled Housing First workers. In 2014, Pilvi had the opportunity to be part of establishing a new Housing First community-based supported housing unit for long- term homeless people. Her main job was to ensure that the workers working in the unit were familiar with Housing First principles and that the support work they did was in line with the Housing First principles. It was very important to ensure that community-based methods were followed, involving residents and workers in the decision making process and everyday life in the unit. Pilvi is currently working as a project coordinator for the NEA project, which aims to stop women´s homelessness by securing their housing pathways. The project consists of eight multidisciplinary sub-projects and my main target with my colleague is to enable these sub-projects to work together and create woman-spesific work methods in the homelessness work field.

Taina works as the Manager of International Work in Y-Foundation in Finland. After social studies at the University of Helsinki she worked at the city of Helsinki to develop services for people with addictions and mental health problems. Since 1999 she has worked in Y-Foundation. Her first role was to build networks with partner organisations to provide services for the tenants. She has also coordinated the national development network on Housing First and since 2016 her main role has been as a Programme Coordinator for the Housing First Europe Hub.   Taina is particularly involved in coordinating the training, community of practice and associate workstreams of the Hub. Languages: Finnish, English. Contact Taina: taina.hytonen@housingfirsteurope.eu