Interprofessional Working in Health and Social Care

3210 Words13 Pages
This essay will focus on inter-professional working in health and social care delivery. The history of inter-professional working will be explored. The nature and types of evidence underpinning inter-professional working focusing on the practice area of protection of vulnerable adults will be discussed. The range of factors that promote and create barriers to inter-professional working will be discussed. The implications of this essay will be discussed in relation to my future practice as a qualified Social Worker as a member of an inter-professional team. The concept of inter-professional working in recent years has been on the agenda since the 1940s and has been debated due to recognition of need (Quinney 2006). Since the 1970s government initiatives required different professions to work together to improve service delivery. More recently government legislation and policies have introduced partnership working for health and social care agencies, which led to inter-professional teamwork becoming the preferred model of working (Quinney 2006). Research indicates that, whilst there has been a generally held belief that collaboration is a very good thing and inter-professional teams have increasingly gained favour in recent years (Cartlidge et al 1991). There has been little evidence to substantiate the view that collaboration leads to an increase in the quality of care, which has furthered the well being of patients and service users (Leathard 1994) This model of joint team working is based on the premise that when health and social care agencies pool their resources and skills the service users will benefit from an efficient service that meets the holistic needs of the service user. However in theory the notion of inter-professional working is reasonable but in reality it does not always happen (Coombs and Ersser 2004). Hall (2005) suggests
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