Developing Multiprofessional Teamwork for Integrated Children's Services

Abstract

By Anning, Angela, Cottrell, David, Frost, Nick, Green, Josephine and Robinson, Mark Maidenhead : Open University Press , 2006 ISBN 9780335219780 , 147 pp, £17.99 (pb) Despite the strong current emphasis on the value of multi-agency working, there is still little research evidence on the impact of joined up services and multi-professional practice on outcomes for service users. It was within this context — and before the publication of Every Child Matters or the 2004 Children Act — that the research project which informs this book was begun. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and based at Leeds University, the Multi-Agency Teamwork for Children's Services (MATCh) project was set up to explore, over a 2-year period, the daily realities of delivering public and voluntary sector services by multi-agency teamwork. The project worked with five well-established teams, exemplifying the type of multi-professional teams operating across the statutory and voluntary sectors — a youth offending team, a young people's Child and Adolescent Mental Health team, a nursery for children with learning difficulties, a head injury team and a child development team. Using two theoretical frameworks —‘communities of practice’ and activity theory — the study examines how the teams developed and functioned, how they were organised and managed, and the experiences of the individuals working in them. The issues that are raised will be familiar to anyone who has worked with colleagues with different training, beliefs, value systems and language and who are likely to hold different constructs of family and childhood. Working in inter-agency teams challenges professional identities and status and leads to a new sense of ‘who I am’. The authors also point to the way in which the nature of professional knowledge is challenged —‘what I know’ and ‘what I do’ draws on a combination of formal and informal, and theoretical and experiential knowledge, and whilst much of this knowledge is tacit within the workplace, in multi-agency teams it has to be made more explicit and drawn from across the team. The point is also made that it remains important to respect and deploy distinctive specialisms within teams, as well as general understanding, if professionals are to gain job satisfaction. The main value of this book for managers and practitioners is its discussion of some of the key dilemmas faced by multi-professional teams. The researchers introduced a series of scenarios to the members of their teams, illustrating specific incidents that arose during the course of the project and the dilemmas they presented — for example about sharing and acknowledging specialist expertise, reshaping working practices, negotiating new ways of working, resolving difference of values, transferring skills, sharing information, etc. They draw on the response to these scenarios, and on other research in the field, to explore strategies for resolving these dilemmas, focusing in particular on strategies for making decisions and delivering services for children. A number of themes are examined, amongst them shared procedures, clear lines of accountability, clarity on employment conditions, effective leadership, agreed strategic objectives and shared aims, transparent communication structures and ongoing support for professional development. This is a timely book and one that will be of value to all those who work across agencies to plan, commission, deliver and review services for children and families. But we should not forget that the main purpose of multi-professional and across-agency working is to deliver services that are more effective in meeting the needs of children and improving their well-being. Multi-professional working is a means to an end, and an important means, but not an end in itself.