Can we imagine different ways of working together to secure better outcomes for children and families? What are the complex issues that underlie the apparently simple call for ''joined-up'' services?
Children''s services in many countries around the world are being transformed as part of the call for ''joined-up working for joined-up solutions''. Social, health and educational policy discourses are driven by the idea that ''effective'' inter/professional, interagency collaboration is crucial in determining whether service delivery to children and families will succeed or fail. However, the rapid turn from previous inter/professional practices of liaison, consultancy, cooperation and collaboration to more radical and wholescale service integration and sector transformation has not been accompanied either by a well considered research agenda of hard questions nor close scrutiny of its effects and consequences.
The book asks a series of searching and challenging questions:
