Improve Joint Working Research Articles

Blackburn with Darwen Action Learning Set ‐ A Model for Improving the Interface Between Inpatient and Community Teams

lackburn with Darwen action learning set was commissioned by the Blackburn with Darwen mental health local implementation team to improve collaboration between community teams and wards in order to develop the quality of care in Blackburn’s inpatient settings. The action learning set (ALS) was introduced during a period of significant organisational change and flux in the senior management team and prior to the publication of an external investigation about a serious incident involving the death of a former inpatient. The overall aim of the initiative was to improve the quality of inpatient care by bringing together first-tier nurse managers of wards and community teams in a learning environment over an extended period. Most of the managers had not taken part in any post-qualification management training and none had any prior experience of action learning. This article was written one year after the commencement of the ALS and prior to the formal evaluation. It suggests that action learning is an appropriate method of bringing together team leaders and that the subsequent improved joint working is beginning to have a significant impact on the way managers cope with the day-to-day stresses of their work and upon the inpatient experience.

‘Only Connect … ’: tightrope walking and joint working in the care of the elderly

Repeated calls for improved joint working between agencies and professionals providing social care have had limited success. Following a brief review of possible reasons for this, it is argued that joint working cannot truly succeed unless it does so at street level at the professional/user interface. Yet this level has received little attention. Taking the example of a mechanism created to ease communications and negotiate transitions between a range of services for the elderly, the paper demonstrates that there exists an important but neglected role for brokers or mediators (so-called ‘reticulists’) who display an awareness of the political realities and power dimension of organisational life and who operate on the margins and in the interstices of services. Of the lessons to be learned from this initiative in joint working the most important is that a direct transplant is likely to suffer rejection. The mechanism reported on is a product of its environment—a ‘bottom-up’ response to a perceived problem—and tailored accordingly.