Approaches to Multi-Agency Collaboration
Multi-agency collaboration has garnered considerable attention recently, and it’s at the top of a lot of political interests. Working together is thus a fundamental mechanism for accomplishing the ECM’s five goals for kids and youth: being well, being secure, making a positive contribution, enjoying and achieving, contributing positively, and improving financial welfare. There are several approaches which can be classified in “multi-agency” for example, partnership, Co-operative practices, multi-agency working, multidisciplinary working and Trans-disciplinary working. There are several stages in multi-agency working. These are exchanging information, framing an action, implementing projects and plans, coordinating and making co-operation in practice, making collaborative and full partnership. Information exchange includes mutual learning, having knowledge of what partner doing, taking part in decision making process and finding alternative methods for accessing information. It involves evaluating local as well as other service needs. Focus is also on finding new partners, identifying new methods and assisting in nurture development (Cleaver et al., 2019).
Multiagency working is a term being used where more than one team work on a single project. Throughout their lifetimes, children and youth who have received care communicate with multiple experts and in services. When most of these professionals and agencies interact well with one another to manage the assistance they provide, this is a perfect example of multi-agency functioning. These teams may be from same organization or from different organization. They share their objectives, information and responsibilities to intervene in early stage for reducing problems which may put impact on the children’s learning and achievement. There are multiple aspects in management of multiagency and professional culture such as service condition, working hour, recruitment and retention of staff (Shorrock, McManus, and Kirby, 2019).
A multiagency team play a vital role in health and social service sector. An interdisciplinary team is a combination of experts from different areas which collaborate for a combined mission. These professionals work in a group to deliver person-cantered, integrated help and treatment to individual who require assistance (Thomson, et al., 2018). All governmental, private, and faith-based health and social service organizations participate in enhancing cooperation. Child protection, juvenile justice, psychological health, schooling, drug and alcohol abuse, wellness are all examples. In a culture of partnerships, these organisations collaborate to address the multifaceted requirement of children and young. Multidisciplinary coordination is expressed in a care system at both the administration and direct practise levels. Financial assistance to fill gaps in services can be provided through formal intergovernmental management groups (Rasku et al., 2019).
There are several other factors in which MAW can help in health and social wellbeing factors. These are making funding strategies, framing multiagency management information system, delivering gatekeeping functions for reducing community placement, making communication plans and program initiating strategy and making multiagency training agendas.
Timely and appropriate hazard identification, increased sharing of information, unified decisions, and collective effort all need collaboration across organizations. Multi-agency partnership allows multiple services to work combindly for reducing the hazardous situation which occurred in the first instance. It’s a strong approach for supporting kids, teenagers, and households with their particular requirements and to make sure better output (Wilkinson, Cohen?Hatton, and Honey, 2019).
Stages in Multi-Agency Working
There are various roles a multi-agency team play in healthcare as well as for raising social system. Multi-agency collaboration can help susceptible kid’s mental health by enhancing cooperation across organizations and fields (Cottrell, et al., 2016). More channels of communication lead to an accumulated knowledge of the psychiatric care for children and adults. All the organization has different rules and regulations which make it complicated in some situations for collaborative multiagency working. These rules and regulation often work as conflict among organizations. Inter-agency collaboration is about creating a consistent solution to people with distinct and complicated needs while adhering to norms and regulations. This could be on a regular basis or as interdisciplinary team (Butt et al., 2019).
During their lives, Kids and youth who have received care will engage in a variety of experts and programmes. When most of these professionals and agencies interact well with one another to organize the assistance they provide, this is a good illustration of multi-agency functioning. Partnership across services and improving results for the children and youth they serve is at the heart of multi-agency functioning (Cleaver et al., 2019).
However there are various challenges in the success of multi-agency working. While the advantages of operating in a multi-agency arrangement clearly outweigh any disadvantages, there are some drawbacks to this approach that should be addressed. The first is that coordinating a group of individuals who are all accountable for different duties and typically report to different bosses is significantly more difficult. This can cause delays and arguments at first, which can take considerable time to resolve. There are a number of obstacles that must be addressed. Getting organizations combined entails bringing together diverse professional attitudes, dialects, positions, and duties, frequently against a context of historic tensions (Roberts, Vyhnanek & Rao, 2012). If differences and challenges are to be eradicated, a true dedication to cooperative functioning will be required. Furthermore, because integrative work is perceived as the cure to everyone’s issues, professionals are likely to have high assumptions of what they can do with little resources. This might result in a lot of work and a lot of pressure. Top management commitment will be critical in fostering a culture of both enthusiasm and reality about what service can accomplish (Driscoll et al., 2020).
By following the Townley’s approach, more focus should be on children who required extra care and support. By using this approach, their family will also be fall in the circle of requirement for providing the best care facility to the patient as well as to their family members. It will also help in enhancing trust between patient and health professionals. Apart from Townley’s model, there will be decision making group, operational activity managing team and other team working as different model of multi-agency working.
It might be challenging to determine how to effectively deploy cash and resources when a multi-agency agency receives them all at once (Solomon, 2019). While some programmes may be under higher pressure than others, assuring that everybody receives appropriate level of assistance can be difficult. While collaboration functioning and data exchange are expected, there may be a misunderstanding of each participant of a multi-agency group’s functions and responsibilities. Communicating with others can be difficult, specifically when the complete team is rarely in same place at the same time (Rees et al., 2021).
Importance of Multi-Agency Collaboration in Health and Social Services
Kids and families that enrolled in child welfare state have different requirements which necessitate the intervention of multiple agencies. When a family requires these kinds of services, the efficiency of one provision is frequently associated with the obtainability and efficiency of the other necessary approaches. Teamwork allows team members to have a stronger insight of the regulations and statutes that govern funding and practise concerns, while also raise the amount of financing and programming services available to kids and families. Multi-agency collaboration reduces repetition and enhances the performance with
A vision for adult social care: capable communities and active Citizens (2010), Building a safe and confident future Implementing the recommendations of the Social Work Task Force (2010), Common Assessment Framework for adults (2010) and Healthcare for all: report of the independent inquiry into access to healthcare for people with learning disabilities (2008) are some of the policies implemented in the United Kingdom which enhances the importance of multi-agency working (Scie 2021). There will be requirement of sharing and using information between more than one department (Peckover, and Golding, 2017). Improvement in health outcomes, better connection and adherence to therapy, reducing hospital admit days, and lesser unpredicted hospitalizations will all require interdisciplinary and multi-agency expanded community teams, as well as healthcare administrators and third-party contributions. Here are four case studies which describes about the use of multiagency working in evaluating the case in which some of the cases were get worst even after using the multiagency approach where some get better results.
Physical abuse victims who have been measured as being at higher risk of significant injury or death are sent to MARAC, a multi-agency conference. Professionals from a variety of departments, including police, healthcare, children’s services, accommodation, Individual Domestic Abuse Advisors, justice, mental health and drug abuse, and other government and non – government sector experts, join the MARAC. Following that, the MARAC improves a multi-agency strategy to overcome the risks identified and enhance the security and well-being of all individuals who are at risk. The MARAC’s major goal is to enhance the wellbeing of adult victims. However, according to UK law, which places a premium on children’s safety, the MARAC will collaborate with the other inter-agency sessions and procedures (Robbins, et al., 2014). There are various other examples of multi-agency working and their challenges.
The case study of Baby P is a good example of multiagency working. On august 2007, Peter Connelly (Baby P) died after continuous abuse by his mother, her boyfriend and by the person who live on rent in his home. A multiagency collaborative team of social workers, lawyers, doctors and police and others were included in the case. He suffered from more than 50 injuries. Baby P’ had a broken spine, a fractured shinbone, harm to his brain, darkened fingers and toes from smoke burns, missing finger nails, cuts to his neck, soft tissue loss, and rib fracture, among other injuries. The organizations that were working with the household and Peter lacked professional inquiry. By following the health and social care bill 2011, responsibility should be transferred to local community level authorities for delivering better responsibility to them for effective outcome. Effective multi-agency working by following these laws and policies will allow different approaches to cooperate together to reduce problems which happened at first instance. It’s a strong approach for helping kids, youth, and parents with special requirements and to make sure better results (Peckover, and Golding, 2017).
Roles of Multi-Agency Team in Healthcare and Social Services
However, in this situation, there had been a lack of understanding, and public care did not even know who was looking for wellbeing of Peter at all times, despite the fact that, given his protection order, there should’ve been an understanding of who was looking for Peter’s wellbeing at any one moment (Sellgren, 2010).
Victoria Climbié died on February 25, 2000, after suffering horrific assault and torture. Victoria was transferred to London and placed in a hostel before being moved to Tottenham with her auntie in 1999 to stay with Karl Manning, where she was forced to physical and mental torture. Her body was covered with more than a hundred injuries. There was lack of professional curiosity in the investigation by multiagency working. According to the “Building the National Care Service White paper (2010)”, objectives of the care should be transformed in the initial level for the early intervention and prevention. It include joined up services. However, in this case, Victoria’s support worker contacted numerous times but received no response, so she believed they had moved far away. Victoria’s file was simply dismissed by Haringey Social Services the day she died, demonstrating a lack of monitoring and fact checking across all authorities to protect Victoria. All organizations that knew Victoria were caught giving kid safety a low priority, owing to a lack of budget, manpower, and management (Marsh, 2003).
Mr Hoskin, who had learning disabilities, was abused and drugged before being dragged to a bridge and pushed to dangle from rails, where he died. In additional to the damages exacted in the accident, a post-mortem investigation revealed that he had injury issues on his body from cigarette burns, neck injuries from being carried around his house by a dog-lead, and fingerprints on the back sides of his hands where they were stepped on before he fell. It was revealed yesterday that police, social workers, and other organisations missed dozens of opportunities to intervene in the case of Hoskin, a man with significant learning disabilities who was abused and drugged prior falling to his death from a bridge. Steven believed that increased inter-agency collaboration could help him (Morris, 2007). According to the policy of Building a safe and confident future implementing the recommendations of the Social Work Task Force (2010), there is requirement for an initial training framework in the initial period of their working which will focus on most adequate potential entrants which will help in better outcomes. However, there is no proper implementation of this policy in the case of Hoskin. All of these case studies were also not following the important aspects of MARAC. There was no coordination among all the agencies aligned in the case. In all these cases, multiagency collaboration was highly required for effective social services as well as for enhancing any type of project success rate. Multiagency collaboration raises a feeling of community accountability in the care of kids and families and similarly evaluation of their abilities and priorities (Curnin, et al., 2015).
Multi-agency working is also important for reducing the inequality in the society. The main advantage of multi-agency collaboration in safekeeping is that it significantly reduces the possibility of abuse. When dealing with kids and weak persons, many professionals usually obtain conflicting data and are subjected to diverse settings. Working with people from various professions can also provide different insights on conditions where a child may be at hazard, and histroy in similar circumstances can result to quicker safe activity and reducing harm (Darra et al., 2020).
Challenges in Multi-Agency Working
With more resources in terms of several practitioners with links to many organizations, security concerns may be addressed much more quickly. These reactions are also frequently more customized based on the circumstances, allowing specific needs to be satisfied and problems to be managed more successfully, lowering the risk of repeated abuse. Child abuse is frequently caused by a variety of conditions, including housing, finances, education, bad health, and an insufficient support. A multi-agency group can address all of these elements at same time, resulting in a higher effect and a lower chance of future abuse (Darra et al., 2020).
Furthermore, approaching discrimination and other safety concerns from several perspectives allows us to have a better understanding of where known risk factors emerge, what typical behavioural patterns lead to discrimination, and which services require the most efforts. Rather than collecting data at the entity level, this larger picture enables for the development of efficient policies for minimising and preventing misuse. Multi-agency collaborations allow for the sharing of best practises and expertise among different organizations, which can result to changes in the way these products are provided. This enables a high grade of care across the board, so enhance the effectiveness of support provided and, as a result, the livelihoods of more individuals (Ward et al., 2019).
While working in a multiagency team, anti-discriminatory practice can have several impact on the success. As an anti-discriminatory practise, the inter-agency team has a number of benefits. It contributes to the expansion of people’s freedom and the reduction of prejudice. It gives fragile and ethnic minority people in society more opportunity. To a certain extent, it reduces social marginalisation. In terms of career prospects, it promotes greater equality. In addition, it makes the school program more equitable and encourages students to participate in a variety of topics. However, there are also some limitations associated with it. More attention on improving role models and reducing preconceptions is required in schooling, marketing, and the media, among other places (Winstone, 2019).
For several years, multi-agency collaboration has been an efficient method to safekeeping, and it arose from the realisation that addressing numerous aspects of a person’s condition is a far more effective strategy to improve it than focusing solely on one. Working in safety, no matter what business or area you work in, the need of multi-agency collaboration in preventing exploitation is critical. Even if you’re part of a multi-agency group or just considering the advantages of interdisciplinary collaborations, it’s a great approach to pool resources, knowledge, and expertise to enhance the quality of services you provide to those who need it.
References
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