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Project Background

Current government policies aimed at the social inclusion of at risk children, young people and their families call for joined up responses from professionals. Such responses need to be flexible and demand that practitioners work together to help clients to take control of their own lives. Flexible and responsive approaches require new forms of co-working across traditional professional boundaries and new organisational practices to enable effective collaboration.

The four year ‘Learning in and for Interagency Working’ study will develop and test a model of work-based professional learning designed to foster responsive multiagency collaboration. The project team will work with a sample of local authorities, taking the education and care plans of young people at risk of social exclusion or with special educational needs as the objects around which to examine interagency practices. The project draws on activity theory to examine both professional and organisational learning and builds on work in medical and commercial settings by Professor Yrjö Engeström and his Centre in Helsinki. LIW will operate in parallel with a study of collaborative professional learning led by Engeström and funded by the Finnish Learning for Life Programme.

The LIW research team will work closely with practitioners, for example, educational psychologists, teachers and school support services. It will produce material on professional learning, interagency working and client participation aimed at both professional and policy communities. The team will link with other service providers working with children, young people and families, to ensure the broad relevance of the model of learning that it will be producing and testing.