Multi-agency workshops help practitioners from different services identify duplicate and conflicting services

How multi-agency workshops provide a forum for frontline practitioners to see a different way of working, including developing a broader understanding of what is not working, and identify issues that need resolving.

The change process provides ways for participants in the process to see/ find for themselves issues that need resolving. The challenge is to enable individuals to identify problems they had not previously identified through their normal ways of working.

During multi-agency workshops, real life case studies of vulnerable children and young people are used. Agencies map how they do or might interact with the child or young person, and how they interact with other agencies around the child, onto brown paper, creating a very visual journey map. By doing this, greater insight is gained on areas that are working or not working.

Three examples from the multi-agency workshop:

• A young person is truanting from school. It is highly likely the reason for the truanting is the young person is being bullied. When the individual is found in the local streets/parks during school time, the beat officer returns the young person to the school. In the workshop, there was a realisation by the beat officer that he was returning the young person to the potential source of the problem, rather than addressing the problem
  
  
• A young person being bullied at school was asked to come in early and leave later to avoid the bullies. There was a realisation by the school community during the workshop that the person being bullied was being asked to change (being treated differently), as opposed to addressing the bullying
  
  
• The response to a particular issue on the journey map was to provide an anger management programme. Two different agencies realised they would have done the same thing and that there were at least three different agencies all providing anger management programmes ie there was an overlap in provision

Comments
Finding tools that allow the participants of the change process to uncover problems themselves is a very powerful way of engaging them and building commitment to change. It makes addressing issues potentially much easier.

Further information
Relevant activities for this case study include holding a multi-agency workshop, which is part of the activities in the Discover stage.

Click for further case studies relevant to the Discover stage of the targeted youth support change process.