ABSTRACT
The notion of ‘multiagency’ working pervades contemporary UK social policy. This is particularly the case in children’s services, where since 2003 local authority provision has been framed by the Every Child Matters agenda. Ushered in by the New Labour government, the Every Child Matters Green Paper emphasised the need to begin ‘integrating professionals through multi-disciplinary teams responsible for identifying children at risk, and working with the child and family to ensure services are tailored to their needs’ (Department for Education and Skills, 2003, p. 51). Multiagency working has thus been characterised as a driver of social inclusion. Effective collaboration across education, social care, health services, mental health services and criminal justice has been depicted as essential to supporting young people and families who are ‘at risk’ of social exclusion. However, relatively little attention has been paid to how professionals might learn to ‘do’ multiagency working or ‘become’ multiagency workers. Arguably, this is because much of the UK literature has underestimated the qualitative changes in professional practice that shifts towards multiagency working entail; much policy and strategic literature implies models of working that no longer match the landscape of emerging practice. As service providers increasingly work across traditional service and team boundaries, professionals find themselves located in complex, vertiginous settings in which individual and collective practices are undergoing radical transformation that necessitates new learning and knowledge creation.
