| Popis: |
There have been increasing calls for the people in the Children's Workforce (a term that encompasses 2.68 million workers in 60 different professional settings in the UK) to work together better. The demand for collaboration is based on two premises. On the one hand collaboration is seen as a way to ensure better protection of children in response to events such as the tragic death of 'Baby P' On the other, collaboration is a way to maximise the use of increasingly limited public sector resources. This collaboration is unique in that it is all focussed on the well-being of children, it occurs between professionals working over their single disciplinary boundaries and it is forging new practices. Collaboration in the children's workforce in the UK had a particular name, 'integration'. Integration was mandated in the 2004 Children Act. I examined collaboration in the children's workforce in a single Local Authority in order to understand the ways in which people came together to effect change for children across organisational boundaries. The research involved iterative cycles of action research, and my role was developmental. The research proposed a socially constructed and sociocultural model of collaborative agency that accounts for the interplay of structures, agency and professional identity, and the process of empowerment. It offers practical suggestions and tools at a practice level that will allow people at all levels in the children's workforce to understand and advance the ways that they work together. |
