Improving interagency collaboration

Efforts to improve interagency working in situations of extra-familial risks and harms were often highlighted within the literature reviewed for this book as a critical element in creating the conditions within which effective practice could thrive. This chapter explores the rationale and methods for enhancing cooperation and building a common purpose among partner organisations, which each have a role to play in responding to EFRH. These include: co-locating professionals from different organisations; the development of multi-agency protocols and information-sharing agreements; the co-commissioning of responses; and the streamlining of multi-agency meetings and decision-making processes. The challenges that professionals face when trying to work across agencies, and the effects of inadequate collaboration on service delivery and young people’s welfare, are considered. The chapter ends by presenting challenges and successes in moving towards shared interagency definitions of adolescence, vulnerability and extra-familial risks and harms.