The interprofessional agenda in health and welfare

Abstract

The interprofessional agenda in the health and welfare field has come increasingly strongly into focus in Britain over the past few years in both the public and private sector, as witnessed by the growing emphasis on primary health care and inter-agency work. It has begun to affect the whole range of professional groups in this area, from general practitioners, nurses and speech therapists, at one end of the spectrum, to social workers, probation officers and care managers, at the other. Many factors have contributed towards the move in this direction, including escalating specialisation, shifts in government policy, changes in legislation, the desire for more efficient and more cost effective provision and, perhaps most fundamentally, the desire to enhance the quality of care by establishing more integrated and responsive services. Unsurprisingly, this trend has also been expressed in the growth in the number of publications on this subject especially since the 1980s, not least of which are the three int...