Health & Social Well-being Cooperation

Nordic co-operation in the social and health sector is designed to promote the basic principles of equal treatment for all, social solidarity and access to guaranteed safety and quality in essential services.

Co-operation in the social and health sector falls under the jurisdiction of the Nordic ministers for social affairs and health.

The Committee of Senior Officials on Health and Social Affairs (EK-S) is responsible for the practical implementation of the policy. The committee consists of senior officials from the relevant ministries in the member countries.

Six Nordic institutions are instrumental in achieving the sector's goals.

For more information on social and health care cooperation of the Nordic Council of Ministers please click here. 



Seminar “Deafblindness – a distinct disability of combined vision and hearing impairment” 23-24 October 2008

Within the framework of cooperation on disabled children a two-days seminar “Deafblindness – a distinct disability of combined vision and hearing impairment” was held on 23-24 October 2008 in the Regional Centre for Diagnostics and Consultation of Children and Youngsters in Kaliningrad, where the Nordic experience in the sphere of assistance to people with deafblidness was presented by two experts from Nordic Staff Training Centre for Deaf blind Services (NUD) Marianne Disch, Director and Bente Ozgür, Consultant of the project. The objective of the workshop was to develop knowledge on deafblindness in the region among professionals working in the sphere of assistance to people with visual and hearing impairments, to identify possibilities for development of cooperation in this area on the results of the seminar, to spread the positive Nordic experience in this sphere via information activities. The seminar gathered around 40 participants: 20 - from the Ministry of Education of the Kaliningrad region and per 10 people - from the Social and Public Health Ministries) - authorities, pedagogues and educators of schools and kindergartens, NGOs, specialists of medical institutions and social assistance centres. The participants expressed great interest to the problem of deafblindness and this cooperation will be developed and continued in the future.



The training program on development of services for handicapped children for the staff of Kaliningrad Centre of Rehabilitation for children with disabilities “Special child” was completed. The programme was divided into two seminars with the same content.
The first seminar in “Special child” took part on 23-26 June 2008. The second and the last seminar for the second group of the staff of the “Special child” took part on 20-23 October. Participants of both seminars learned about the ways Nordic experts work with disabled children and their parents relating to communication, attitudes, creating a comfortable environment for the children’s life and development, listened to the theoretical part, shared experience and did some practice work. On the 23^rd of October Director of the Information office Mr. Arne Grove and Nordic experts Lena Christiansen and Mette Kudsk presented participants and speakers of both seminars with diplomas. Thus, the training programme came to its end with fruitful results.

Edited December 16, 2008