Finland's New Children's Hospital and resurgent charity in a Nordic post-welfare state.

Abstract

Finland's New Children's Hospital (NCH) opened in 2018 after a high-profile charity campaign. Through an analysis of the campaign, we illustrate how debates about children's hospitals and charities are simultaneously shaped by universal debates over the ownership and funding of healthcare services, and by the particularities of historical context and local institutional arrangements. Such debates also draw from and contribute to shaping cultural repertoires, particularly shared beliefs and values concerning children, the state and charity. In Finland, the NCH marked a break from an established model of publicly funded hospitals, and a return to the pre-welfare state era when charities played a role in healthcare. The campaign thus generated substantial public debate, in which we identify three core claims: (1) Hospitals must be built with public funding and oversight. (2) Children are suffering because politicians have failed, and a new model is needed. (3) The NCH further strengthens Finland's excellence in paediatric healthcare and promotes health technology exports. Over the course of the campaign, critique faded away, and the second and third lines of argument came to dominate public debate. Through a reflection on the historically changing relations between state, charity and children that shaped what we conceptualise as the NCH assemblage, we show how clichéd cultural tropes naturalised the political shift toward a post-welfare state that is embedded in the NCH campaign. As citizens without voter rights, children are exceptionally easy for politicians to sidestep when allocating funds. Yet, as what Sara Ahmed describes as 'objects of feeling', children are also exceptionally potent targets for charity, who, in the NCH case, came to serve as tools for the neoliberal disassembling and reassembling of healthcare services in Finland.