Partnership Working Essay

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Partnership working is a key concept, driven by professional values within the social care field and underpins all recent legislation relating to health or social care provision. The idea being that a multi disciplinary team is formed around a child or young person to promote better outcomes for the individual by providing a person centred service. Partnership working is about working closely with the young person, their families, professionals and other agencies to improve their outcomes and safeguard from harm. Following the deaths of children, a consistent theme which has been reported in Serious Case Reviews has been weaknesses in agencies working together to safeguard the young people (Horwath, 2010:29). In Lord Lamings Inquiry Report into the death of Victoria Climbie many of the same concerns noted during the 1980's and 1990's regarding weaknesses in partnership working were echoed in his report. Lack of understanding, poor communication and misinterpretation of information between professionals were found to be the cause. The recommendation highlighted the importance of increased accountability and facilitation of multi disciplinary practice (CM 5730, 2003:3). The Green Paper 'Every Child Matters' and the subsequent Children's Act 2004 addressed these matters. In 2010 the Government produced The Working Together to Safeguard Children guidance which is generic and sets out how practitioners should work together in accordance with the Children's Act 1989 and the Children's Act 2004 (HM Government, 2010:7). In April 2013 in response to recommendations from the Munro Report 'A Child Centred System' the Department of Education published the revised guidance (Department of Education, 2013). So what is partnership working? Jo Tunnard (1991, cited in Jackson and Morris, 1994:3) describes "The essence of partnership is sharing. It is marked by respect for one
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