Youth Crime
Inter-Agency work and Connexions Strategy
Inter-agency partnership working has been one of the guiding principles behind the Connexions Strategy. This research examines the practical problems involved in successful implementation of inter-agency work, what such an approach means for the daily tasks of front-line workers and how effective it is.
Title: Inter-Agency work and Connexions Strategy
Author: Bob Coles, Liz Britton and Leslie Hicks
Date published: December 2004
Number of pages: 4
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What is the Connexions Strategy?
Connexions seeks to co-ordinate support for young people aged 13 to 19 years by allocating them a Connexions Personal Adviser (PA). It is especially targeted at young people aged 16 and 17 who are not in or are at risk of disengaging with education, employment or training.
Findings
Staff in partner agencies were confused about the variety of different roles played by Connexions Personal Advisers (PAs) and unclear about PAs responsibilities and authority.
Lack of clarity, particularly in schools, resulted in a continuing suspicion that Connexions had not brought the radical changes some had hoped it would.
Many PAs were effective advocates for young people, acting as "powerful friends" in dealing with other organisations. However, PAs found some providers difficult to work with because of conflicting priorities and working practices
The use of case conferences to co-ordinate different professionals' work with individual young people was rare.
There was little systematic or effective information sharing. This was most likely to occur within multi-disciplinary teams working from the same base.
Failure to share information sometimes resulted in an incomplete assessment of needs and inappropriate patterns of support.
The researchers identified the following gaps in organisational structures where support for effective inter-agency work was needed:
better management support for front-line workers
clarification of protocols on joint working, and
mechanisms for troubleshooting conflict between agencies.
Last update: Wednesday, September 17, 2008