Veera
Niemi
Areas of expertise
Biography
I have worked as a university teacher and doctoral student of social work in the Department of Social Recearch, University of Turku, during 2011-2015 and again from February 2021. In between I worked in child protection as social worker and head of a child protection agency in Keski-Uudenmaan sote -kuntayhtymä (Järvenpää). I have also experience from social work in health care (Turku university hospital) and in rehabilitation (Kuntoutuskeskus Petrea). Currently I am working in three research projects:
ASKE: Pathways to homelessness in the Turku region – from transitions to social, health, economic and technological sustainability, 2023-2026, funded by Länsi-Suomen yleishyödyllinen asuntosäätiö, through Turku Urban research programme. In English | ASKE-tutkimushanke
RADAR: RADAR -Register Data Analysis for Addressing Homelessness and Reducing it - Y-Säätiö (ysaatio.fi), 2024-2026, funded by The Housing Finance and Development Centre of Finland (Ara).
HACL: Exploring homelessness among young care leavers: Addressing challenges and finding potentials in a Nordic welfare context (HACL) | NordForsk, 2023-2026, funded by Nordforsk.
Homelessness Counts: EU - Homelessness Counts — LUCAS - Centre for Care research & consultancy, 2025, funded by European Union.
Teaching
At the moment I work as a full time researcher, but during 2011-2024 my teaching has focused on child protection, social work ethics, qualitative and quantitative methods and social work practice in University of Turku and Open University of Turku.
Research
In our research we join together different national and local population registers and social and health care client and patient registers in order to analyse homelessness longitudinally. Our analysis focuses especially on changes in housing pathways and major life events preceding, during and after homelessness periods.
In our other research projects we analyse also for example the intersection between homelessness and child protection after care in the Nordic Context.