Working together: Child guidance clinics and social service area teams

Abstract

Abstract There seems always to have been some barriers to the smooth working together of child guidance clinics and social service area teams. The ‘discussion’ over the role of social workers in child guidance clinics and their relationship with colleagues in area child care teams is ongoing and seems in danger in some places of being ‘solved’ by the withdrawal of social workers from child guidance clinics. Some things have changed very little since the publication in 1975 of the Child Guidance Special Interest Group's discussion document comparing the social work roles in the two settings. As a social worker who has spent equal amounts of time working in each agency—and experiencing first hand the ‘splitting’ of loyalties this can arouse—the author explores the relationships between the two agencies at practitioner level and in particular looks at the joint work that is possible using a structural family therapy model.