14 cooperation Nordic cooperation The Nordic NPMs meet regularly twice a year. The Finnish NPM hosted the January 2017 meeting in Helsinki. In addition to Finnish representatives, the meeting was attended by representatives of the Swedish, Norwegian and Danish NPMs. For the first time, a representative of the Parliamentary Ombudsman of Iceland also participated in the meeting. The topic of the meetings was inspection methods, interviewing techniques and the use of external experts. The meeting was paired with a training day on interviewing methods and using external experts. The speaker at the meeting was Dr. Clive Meux from the Institute of Psychiatry in London, UK. The subsequent meeting was held in Oslo in August 2017, hosted by the Norwegian NPM. The topic of the August meeting was inspection visits made to units housing minors. A special theme discussed was the use of coercion and restrictive measures on minors during transport to or between institutions. The speaker at the meeting was Kirsten Sandberg, Professor of Law at the University of Oslo and a member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, who gave a talk on “The best interest of the child and reflections on the NPM work”. NPM collaboration between EU Member States The coordinator of the NPM attended a two-day meeting in Strasbourg in April 2017, on the launch of collaboration between the NPMs of the EU Member States (EU NPM Network). Other cooperation In March 2017, the Ombudsman played host to a representative of the European Ombudsman, who came to find out about the work of the Ombudsman. During the visit, the representative was also introduced to the operations of the NPM. The delegation of the Ombudsman of Montenegro paid a two-day visit to the Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman in September 2017. One of the objectives of the visit was to learn about the practices of the Finnish NPM, including inspection visits made to closed institutions and psychiatric units in particular. In the same month, four representatives of the Estonian NPM joined the Finnish NPM on a two-day inspection visit to the psychiatric care facilities run by the Päijät-Häme Joint Authority for Health and Wellbeing. During the same visit, the Estonian guests had the opportunity to visit a residential social welfare unit for people with memory disorders. Training The NPM organised a training event for office staff and external experts on interview methods and the use of external experts for inspection visits. The on-duty lawyer of the Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman participated in a seminar series in January and February 2017 on the mental well-being of refugees, which focused on the recognition of mental health problems in refugees and the treatment offered to refugees who have experienced severe trauma. The seminar was organised by the National Institute of Health and Welfare (THL), HUH Psychiatry, and the Finnish Association for Mental Health.