The issue addressed is the need of knowledge on the receiving society among the newly immigrated persons. As it is now, only the largest cities have the means to provide multilingual advice services for new comers.

The quantitative goals are to receive 2500 calls or emails through FINFO advice line), to have 12 000 visitors at the website and to have at least 300 registered professional users in the electronic portal. The qualitative goal is to give accurate information that is given in a culturally sensitive and understandable manner to the client. The underlining goal is to enhance the integration of new comers.
Accurate knowledge on one’s rights and responsibilities, as well as on available public services is the basic building block of a successful integration. Often immigrants are left with the understandings prevalent in their ethnic communities which may not be based on accurate and comprehensive knowledge on the receiving society.

FINFO web page provides information through audiovisual means and an electronic portal of local services is meant for professionals working with clients with an immigration background.

Target population consists on Third-Country Nationals living in Finland or planning to move to Finland. In practice, to some degree also other persons with migration background use the service.

The FINFO service is a nationwide advice line providing information via telephone or email. Direct advice is given in the most widely spoken languages (Finnish, English, Somali and Russian) and telephone interpretation may be connected for other languages. The cost for a client is standard telephone rate only. The service is anonymous. FINFO web page provides audiovisual information. Additionally, an electronic portal for professionals helps them to find relevant local and national information on services to be forwarded to their clients with immigration backgrounds.

Between December 2009 and August 2011, some 600 contacts for advice have been made. The website has had 10 000 visitors and the electronic portal for professionals has almost 200 users. The telephone and email contacts have been somewhat less than expected.

The opinion of the target group, partners, officials and portal users was asked in the evaluation of the service. (See more on evaluation in the evaluation field).

The service was evaluated in spring 2011. The goal of the evaluation was to determine if the service has reached its goals and its target group. The second part of the evaluation targeted on different alternatives and possibilities for the future development of the service.

The most successful function was found to be the establishing the multilingual advice line via telephone and email since this is the only nationwide, anonymous and low threshold advice service for this target group. What was found to be the weakness of the service is the spreading of information to the target group and encouraging active users for the portal for the professionals.

FINFO Multilingual Advice Service is funded by the European Fund for the Integration of Third-Country Nationals.

The annual budget for 2011 is 100 000 € (75 000 € from the European Fund for the Integration of Third-Country Nationals and 25 000 € national funding).

The project has in 2011 a one full-time project coordinator, a part-time service counsellor. In addition, other employers in the Family Federation of Finland give their resources in the form of providing counselling in other languages, advising, planning and developing the service.