ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights these critiques with a particular focus on questions they raise regarding responsibility. It points to a few, indicating the distinct issues that need to be considered depending on the mix of interests, the institutional boundaries, the sources of relevant knowledge, the relative authority wielded by different partners, and the levels of risk. The directives increasingly govern the everyday practice of professionals through many mechanisms: assessment of collaboration in professional learning and activity, organisation of public services in multi-agency and co-production arrangements, policies embedding collaboration skills in occupational standards, and curricula for interprofessional education. Interprofessional practice (IPP) can be defined as 'multiple workers from different backgrounds comprehensive services by working together synergistically'. Despite the problems and tensions, examples mentioned in this chapter from community policing, citizen journalism, health care and urban planning all show that genuinely democratic collaboration among professions and communities is possible.
