A Guide to Key Working: further afield

Dr John Oates, The Open University

Dr John Oates, The Open University

As I have written in earlier posts, we have been seeking new ways to disseminate the results of our ‘key working’ project on ways of co-ordinating support for families with children or young people with special educational needs and disabilities.

While presenting at an international conference on mental health, I was introduced to the head of the child guidance service of the Caribbean island of St Lucia, who was also presenting.

In conversation, it turned out that she had already come across the Early Support developmental journals that we produced before our keyworking research, and is successfully using them across the island to help support families with children with special educational needs and disabilities.

On hearing about our keyworking research and the guide that we had produced, she was interested in exploring the possibility of using our work as a basis for developing keyworking to enhance inter-agency collaboration, focused on families.

We have since had email exchanges and Skype calls, with the outcome that the proposal was raised at an inter-agency meeting and met with general favour. A further discussion at the next meeting gave agreement to proceed.

The next step will be to take part (via Skype)  in an inter-agency meeting set up specifically to develop the project, followed by designing a roll-out and training programme.