Joined-up delivery, involving both public and voluntary organisations, is a central tenet of New Labour’s aim to make services more efficient and effective. But until this study, the way this major shift in policy is being conceptualised and implemented has scarcely been examined.
Researchers at the University of Leeds investigated five multi-agency teams operating in children’s services in England, covering youth crime, mental health, special needs provision for under-fives, neuro-rehabilitation and assessment of child development.
Key Findings
Challenge, confusion and need for training
- The multi-agency teamwork approach is a complex challenge.
- There is confusion, for instance, between the concepts of multi-disciplinary and multi-agency work.
- The quality of team leaders, including their ability to insist that diversity was a positive thing and that the knowledge and skills of all members should be given equal value, was crucial in confronting and resolving conflicts.
- Lack of training in effective management of multi-agency teams and managing change are two key issues which must be addressed.
Heavy demands and loss of identity
- Heavy demands are made on the professionals involved in terms of their need to rethink their roles and switch to different kinds of activities and working practices.
- Changes could threaten their sense of themselves as specialists when teams worked towards ‘blurring’ responsibilities to create generalist workers. In particular, specialists such as a teacher, health visitor, nurse or special needs nursery nurse, felt they had lost the particular identity they had brought with them to the team from previous mainstream work.
- There can be confusion in how best to use generalist and specialist workers within teams, and differential pay and working conditions can cause resentments if not addressed openly as part of an overall strategic plan.
- Those who were part-time, seconded, or not employed by a lead agency in the team, seemed more uncertain and stressful about their new professional identities within the groups.
Resistance to sharing
- A main focus of the new way of working is the sharing with others of information perhaps previously restricted to those in a particular specialist field, with an expert understanding of its language and practices. Attempting to share information more widely may create anxiety and conflict and affect the way teams work together - setting for instance, medical versus social work; education versus care.
- During meetings about major decisions, jargon could be used to ‘exclude’ some team members from contributing fully to discussions. Use of jargon was often associated with high status specialist knowledge, for example within medical teams, or acronyms used by educational or social services groups.
Creative energy
- On the other hand, individuals spoke of the creative energy released by operating as a team, when professionals felt their newly-developed professional knowledge both enhanced their career opportunities and improved users’ experiences of services.
About the Study
The research was led by Angela Anning, Emeritus Professor of Early Childhood at the School of Education, University of Leeds. Agencies and specialists involved included police, court workers, psychologists, social services, probationary, voluntary sector, education and health professionals.
A multi-method approach was adopted, including analysis of team documents, observation of two meetings per team, interviews with 30 key professionals, and focus group discussions within and across the teams.
Key Words
Multi-agency services, professional knowledge, joined-up government, children
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