ABSTRACT
Working with others is not easy. Often it feels simpler and quicker to act alone. However the evidence is that service users often get a better service when individuals and agencies collaborate to meet their circumstances, considering each person’s health, social and other needs together. Agencies also protect service users from abuse. But service users say they want to be seen as people first and not fitted into artificial service-led categories in order to get help. Working together has become the ‘buzz’ theme of health and social care services at the beginning of the twenty-first century and ‘joined up thinking’, ‘crossagency working’, ‘team work’ and ‘partnership’ are themes that dominate social policy and government directives. If professionals collaborate they can check each others’ work and evaluate their different approaches.
