According to the Occupational Safety Act (229/1958), employers are responsible for taking the steps necessary to prevent workplace accidents and provide safe work environments. Workplace arrangements must take account of special measures required by persons with disabilities or other workers with health and safety requirements.

The Occupational Health Care Act (743/1987) includes provisions on providing workplace assistance and support for persons with disabilities and guidance in obtaining treatment or rehabilitation. The mandatory occupational health service can take the initiative on rehabilitation or other preventive measures. The ultimate decision on transferring an employee to more suitable employment or rearranging the workplace environment remains with the employer.

Rehabilitation legislation

 

Finland has set up a National Advisory Committee on Rehabilitation in accordance with the ILO Convention No 159 on the vocational rehabilitation and employment of persons disabled by physical or mental health conditions. The Committee is a national co-operative organisation including workers' and employers' organisations and organisations for the disabled.⁷ The Committee's main role is to adopt, implement, and monitor national action programmes on rehabilitation and implement rehabilitation legislation, which changed substantially in 1991. The purpose of the legislative reform was to reduce the necessity of putting workers on disability pensions or other long-term social benefits, and to develop opportunities for rehabilitation so that persons with disabilities or reduced work capacity could live independently and avoid institutional care as long as possible. Rehabilitation legislation now requires closer co-operation between providers of rehabilitation services, employers, and health care services; encourages earlier intervention; and standardises rehabilitation allowances. To ensure that rehabilitation begins as early as possible, rehabilitation is also covered by the Occupational Health Care Act. The occupational health care service is obliged to participate in activities promoting the maintenance of working capacity in the workplace.⁸

Under the Act on Services for the Disabled (380/1987), municipalities are responsible for arranging services for persons with disabilities, including home help, housing services and rehabilitation services. However, municipalities have not always fulfilled their responsibility to provide people with mental health disabilities with the necessary services. It has always been difficult to define disability, particularly a multiple disability, in the mental health care sector. The Act has not been actively implemented, and the authorities do not have much experience in applying its provisions to people with mental health disorders.

In Finland mental health problems are usually seen as illnesses rather than disabilities for which accommodations must be made in everyday life. Mental health care users often do not receive the benefits and services to which they are entitled under the Act on Services for the Disabled.⁹ Mental health professionals may deliberately avoid using the term "disability" in order to cast mental health care problems as temporary issues, which most people deal with from time to time, and emphasise the possibility of recovery.¹⁰