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Will collaboration for children work this time round?

In a series of blogs over summer 2023, Dr Carol Jacklin-Jarvis and Dr Steven Parker from the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership reflect on current theory and practice for multi-agency collaboration.

In the first blog, Carol asks ‘Will collaboration for children work this time round?’

ImageSource: Supporting Collaboration in Kids Ages 8-11 (today.com)

Ten years ago I finished the last few sentences of my doctoral study of collaboration in local government children’s services in England, with a particular focus multi-agency working. That study built on my previous career as a practitioner in the public and third sectors, and in policy programmes such as Sure Start and Children’s Centres in local communities.

Yet, in spite of hard work and good intentions, in my practice and subsequent PhD research, I was left with the contradiction that multi-agency collaboration is absolutely essential if we are to improve outcomes for children, yet at the same time collaboration all too often doesn’t work. As research shows (Huxham and Vangen, 2005; Cameron 2016; Sullivan 2022) collaboration is messy and uncertain; it is often dependent on relationships between key individuals (who move on, exclude others, or just run out of energy); and, all too often, it fails to meet policy goals. Policy that sets out intentionally to enable and even prescribe collaboration (think of the various iterations of Working Together guidance from successive governments - see also Jacklin-Jarvis and Potter, 2020) can add a useful clarity where responsibilities and accountabilities overlap, collide, or leave gaps. But policy also has limitations in terms of empowering joint working, making information-sharing between partners real, and improving the quality of support received by children and their families.

So, I am unsure whether to rejoice or to grieve when I see children’s services policy return (as it does with regularity) to a focus on collaboration and integration across organisational and sector boundaries. A current example is the UK Government ‘Family Hubs’ programme (HMG, 2022) with its many similarities to the Children’s Centres programme of twenty years ago. On paper, we can so easily map a trajectory from a coordinated, coherent service, where agencies work better together seamlessly, to ensure better outcomes for children. But if this potential trajectory is so clear, why haven’t previous policy-led endeavours to collaborate, integrate, and join-up services already made life better for England’s children? Of course, part of the answer may be that they have, but that joining-up is a recurrent ongoing activity, rather than a one-off endeavour. Human beings are part of complex systems that continually grow, adapt and progress, but also retract, falter and fail. Another reason that policy-driven multi-agency collaboration doesn’t seem to shift these intractable problems might be that such policy rarely engages with politics in the sense of the competing interests and perspectives of collaborating organisations, including successive governments, political parties, national and local agencies and third sector organisations. For example, guidance on developing Family Hubs (HMG, 2022) mentions poverty only once in over 100 pages, and includes guidance on working with deprivation indices, rather than directly addressing the causes of deprivation. Yet, it is obvious that partners around the table will have different, even potentially contradictory, views on such causes and may well consider the actions and interests of other partners to be contributory factors. There is an inevitable collision of ideas and interests, when, for example, a campaigning organisation sits down with governmental bodies, or local and national government from different political persuasions attempt to integrate services.

So, I return to my question: Will collaboration for children work this time round? It is positive to see multi-agency working and family hubs back on the agenda. However, I often reflect that if collaboration offers a panacea for the challenges faced by many children, then surely by now we woulId now have less child poverty, better educational outcomes, and growing wellbeing: instead of a sense that these issues appear to be getting worse. Saying that, I am always hopeful about the potential of multi-agency working. I remain a passionate advocate of collaboration, with the privilege of working alongside committed people trying to make children’s services work in a more coherent and integrated way.

References

Cameron, A. (2016) What have we learnt about joint working between health and social care? Public Money & Management, 36:1, 7-14

HMG (2022) Family Hubs and Start for Life programme guide¸ London, HMG

Huxham,C. and Vangen, S (2005) Managing for collaborative advantage.

Jacklin-Jarvis, C. and Potter, K. (2020) International Journal of Public Administration, 43:16, 1386-1396

Sullivan, H. (2022) Collaboration and public policy: agency in pursuit of public purpose. Springer International

 

9th May 2023

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