Oksanen, Elisa. Customers' experiences of social inclusion and their development ideas for the work rehabilitation service. Spring 2016. Diaconia University of Applied Sciences. Degree: Bachelor of Social Services.

The goal of this qualitative thesis was to study how rehabilitative work activities influenced the customers’ experiences of social inclusion. The objective was also to find out what kinds of ideas the customers had of improving this particu-lar form of social service.

This was a working life -based research and it was comprised of semi-structured theme interviews with five customers who had participated in rehabilitative work activities. The theoretical framework of this study consisted of the basic concepts of rehabilitative work activities and social inclusion. The research data was analyzed by using a qualitative content analysis. The material was divided by Raivio and Karjalainen’s triangle of the three dimensions of social inclusion. The dimensions are having which represents the financial dimension of social inclusion, belonging which means the communal dimension of social inclusion and acting which indicates the functional dimension of social inclusion.

The most essential outcome of this study was that the customers' experiences of the dimensions having and belonging increased as they took part in rehabilitative work activities. Majority of the customers felt that the compensation for costs eased their financial situation. The study showed as well that the customers’ mental welfare improved as they were able to be a part of society and a certain community. However, the dimension of acting increased partly and the customers experienced marginalization as well when participating in rehabilitative work activities. The customers felt that their self-esteem and/or their emotional mood got better and also the majority felt that they became enlivened and more active during rehabilitative work activities. Furthermore, the customers experienced that they had possibilities of controlling and influencing matters when working with the social worker. On the other hand, it clearly came out that few of the customers were unsatisfied with their influencing opportunities in the community. Also majority had experienced lack of social inclusion with regards to discussing about their future plans.

The customers had complex and innovative ideas of how to improve the work rehabilitation service. Some ideas had to do with the structure of the organization of the work rehabilitating service as well as the process of the service, but also the practices in the processing units. Their suggestions were customer criteria oriented and some of them could be easily implemented in practice.

Keywords: rehabilitating work activities, social inclusion, partnership relation