ABSTRACT
In the context of tackling the criminalisation and exploitation of children in care, this chapter will report the MASH team participants’ perspectives of the challenges and benefits of multi-agency working in the MASH team context. It will begin with an exploration of the improvement in outcomes derived from formal and informal information sharing and relationships in a co-located, multi-agency setting. A discussion of the impact of multi-agency work upon professionals’ ways of seeing the world and responses to safeguarding issues will then follow. The chapter will go on to consider the ways in which differences in the perspectives, approaches and requirements of the various members of the MASH team can potentially affect cohesive working relationships, before detailing the detrimental impact of funding deficiencies. There will be an exploration of the importance of trust between team members, including how the lack of close working relationships can affect outcomes. This will include not only workers within the immediate MASH team, but also those who are located at more of a distance, as the ‘out of area’ placement of CLA remains an ever-present issue. Wenger’s ‘communities of practice’ theory (1998) will be drawn upon at various points to assist in exploring the professionals’ experiences, with consideration given at the end of the chapter to whether the participants in this particular study could be said to be working in emergent or actual ‘communities of practice’.
