ABSTRACT
This chapter examines two innovative programmes aimed at improving support and provision for vulnerable families, and promoting their well-being and resilience. It focuses on the benefits, tensions and challenges associated with the inter-agency collaboration which was central to the two programmes and, arguably, all effective support for vulnerable children, young people and families. Multi-agency, or inter-agency, collaboration and partnership has been the subject of intense policy interest since the early 2000s, represented most clearly by the key New Labour policy, Every Child Matters. Powell and Glendinning offered a contemporaneous, minimal definition which suggested that such partnership requires: the involvement of at least two agents or agencies with at least some common interests or interdependencies and a relationship between them that involves a degree of trust, equality or reciprocity. The importance, and difficulty, of establishing and maintaining trust between professionals and families, as well as among professionals themselves, was a key factor affecting the programmes’ effectiveness.
