Importance Of Inter-Professional And Inter-Agency Collaboration

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Inter- agency and inter –partnership collaboration is an “essential component of good social work practice” (Thomas, Baron, 2012). It consists of social workers working effectively with other professions in partnership to obtain the best results possible. “The term collaboration conveys the idea of sharing and implies collective action oriented toward a common goal” (D’Amour, 2005). Working with other professionals enables both Social Workers and other professionals to share ideas and beliefs that can enable them to achieve different outcomes. “This type of collaboration has been promoted by policy and legislation since the 1960s but has been given particular prominence by the Labour administration” (SCIE, 2009). However, although inter-agency …show more content…

Inter-agency also refers to working and communicating with individuals from different agency. Inter-professional & inter-agency collaboration (IPIAC) empathises the importance of working together on a professional level with other professions and agencies. Effective Inter-professional and inter-agency collaboration is an important element within social work practice. It refers to social workers having confident within their practice and communication while working with other professionals “to achieve, effective outcomes in their work with service users and carers” (Thomas, Baron, 2012). Inter- agency and inter-collaboration enables each professional to bring their own perspective, theories and beliefs to the collaboration. This is beneficial for social work practice as it provides different perspectives from different professionals. It is also another method to increase the standard of care as it places service users in the centre of service across different agencies, institutions and professions. Working within a team is another benefit of IPIAC as it reinforces team work which “facilitates creative solutions to challenging problems” (Drinka et al., 1996). However, a lack of adequate collaboration leads to the downfall of IPIAC and possible fatalities. According to Whittington (2007), “poorly carried out IPIAC can treat …show more content…

The lack of communication between the agencies and professionals involved contributed to complexity of the case. They failed “to communicate the true position of his risk of harm” (LSCB Haringey, 2009) which enabled important information to be missed. They failed to act according to The Every Child Matter’s Policy 2003 and The Children Act 2004 by not keeping Peter safe. The same policy that was introduced partly as a response to the Victoria Climbie case who, was also under the protection of Haringey Social Services. In both cases there was a lack of communication between the different agencies and professional involved. They misses key, clear signs of abuse by not working in collaboration which resulted to both Peters and Victoria’s death. They were both “failed by all agencies” (Sellgren,

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