Multi-agency services: toolkit for practitioners
This section is for practitioners who have not worked in a multi-agency setting before, or who want to find out more about some of the specific issues around preventive and early intervention support for children and families with additional needs.
If you have just joined a multi-agency service, you might be wondering what it's going to be like and how it will influence your career development. Here are some of the benefits identified by practitioners in research and evaluations:
- High levels of job satisfaction compared with their previous jobs
- A sense of liberation from bureaucratic or cultural constraints
- Stimulating opportunities to share learning and skills - as long as the
start-up phase is well-managed
- Good opportunity to take a more holistic approach to meeting children's
needs and to provide preventive and early intervention services
- Good opportunity to provide services in a positive and creative way, which helps de-stigmatise services traditionally seen as inaccessible
Being part of a multi-agency service can also be challenging. These challenges may be different, depending on the type of multi-agency service you are working in.
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If you are part of a multi-agency team or work in an integrated
setting such as a children's centre or extended school, the challenges may
include:
- defining roles and responsibilities
- developing the skills required for collaborative working
- working with people from a range of social and professional cultures and backgrounds
- working with people on a range of different terms and conditions
- adapting to a new organisational culture
- working with new systems and processes.
-
If your multi-agency work involves being part of a panel or network
that meets regularly to discuss different cases, but you are still employed by
your home agency and do most of your work for them, the challenges may
include:
- maintaining a workable caseload, balancing the requirements of the panel with the requirements of your primary role
- working with people from different social and professional cultures, even though you may not have much time to develop together as a team
- maintaining effective links with co-workers in between your regular meetings.
This section of the website has information on many of these different aspects:
-
What
does it mean for me and my role?
-
What
skills and training will I need?
-
Working
with others
- Frequently asked questions
You might also want to read more on the benefits of multi-agency working.
Elsewhere on this website, we have sections on the Common Assessment Framework and lead professional.
This page was last updated on 22 August 2006
