The knowledge-base for collaborative practice

This chapter summarises the theoretical, practice and research literature on working across professional and agency boundaries with families experiencing complex difficulties. It considers what has been written about the potential benefits of working together, and also the challenges to successful joint working encountered in &s;the real world&s; of practice. The chapter reviews the potential losses as well as gains for families that have been pointed to by researchers and explores some of the specific issues that have been found to present challenges to effective joint working. It focuses specifically on interdisciplinary or interagency practice when there are concerns about maltreatment. More recently, throughout the UK, there has been interest in collaborative practice across disciplines and agencies when family stresses first become apparent. In England, Imogen Taylor and colleagues comment on the lack of research that focuses on collaborative working in children&s;s services available to those providing interprofessional education (IPE) programmes.