The Transformation of Children's Services: Examining and debating the complexities of inter/professional working [Paperback]

Can we imagine different ways of working together to secure better outcomes for children and families? What are the complex issues that underlie the apparently simple call for joined-up services?

Childrens services in many countries around the world are being transformed as part of the call for joined-up working for joined-up solutions. Social, health and educational policy discourses are driven by the idea that effective inter/professional, interagency collaboration is crucial in determining whether service delivery to children and families will succeed or fail. However, the rapid turn from previous inter/professional practices of liaison, consultancy, cooperation and collaboration to more radical and wholescale service integration and sector transformation has not been accompanied either by a well considered research agenda of hard questions nor close scrutiny of its effects and consequences.

The book asks a series of searching and challenging questions:

• What are the complex issues involved in childrens sector transformation for all those involved  young people, practitioners, leaders and managers, policy makers?
• How can the silos in which professionals have traditionally been prepared for practice be broken down?
• What are the orthodoxies that surround joined-up working and in what ways should they be challenged?

Written by authors from across the wide range of professional, policy and disciplinary groups involved in this new cross-cutting area of policy and practice, this book provides a critical analysis of the complexities of childrens services transformations. The research in this collection addresses the range of discursive, policy and organizational developments associated with the transformation of lÀ