Electronic consultancy (eConsultancy) is an effective and flexible way to support the work of social work professionals. Specialised knowledge can be disseminated and accessed online around the clock, regardless of geographic location.
The eConsultancy service is available to all registered users of Sosiaaliportti.
The eConsultation process
The eConsultancy service allows users to ask advice and receive support from different consultancy groups within social work.
The consultancy groups deal with specific topic areas and answer questions submitted via the eConsultancy service in Sosiaaliportti. The group discusses the question and collectively formulates the answer that is multidimensional and has information from different consultants.
Each consultancy group has its own web pages with information on what kinds of questions will be answered, how the consultants are and how the group works.
A groups has approximately 10 consultants. Each consultancy group has a contact person who co-ordinates the group’s activities. The consultants answer questions from the perspective of their own domain and according to their best knowledge and know-how.
Before submitting questions, users can read about the consultancy groups and select the one they want to consult. Questions are received on a daily basis and it will take the consultancy group about a week to discuss and answer question submitted. The eConsultancy service is free of charge.
With the permission of the person submitting the question, the questions and answers are edited so that the identities of persons involved are disquised and published on the database of Sosiaaliportti, so that they will benefit a wide audience of professionals in social work.
Data protection
The questions, answers, comments and requests for additional information that go through the eConsultancy service are recorded in the service. Registered (and logged-in) Sosiaaliportti users have access to this section of the service. The eConsultancy takes place in a secure, SSL-encrypted environment. This means that only the person submitting the question, the members of the consultancy group and the webmaster have access to the questions and the answers.
The members of the consultancy group see the information stored by the system, that is, the person’s name, e-mail address, job title, employer and post office.