Inter-professional Working in the Primary School: implications for leadership Anne Edwards OUDE.

Inter-professional Working in the Primary School: implications for

leadershipAnne Edwards

OUDE

Overview

• The recent focus on prevention of harm and of social exclusion

• Leadership challenges arising from inter-professional work

• Being a resourceful leader

Some of the Research Studies on Children’s Services

• A national evaluation of a government initiative aimed at promoting inter-professional work (NECF)

• ESRC studies of Learning in and for Interagency Working (LIW) and how schools work with other agencies to prevent social exclusion (PSE)

• A study of knowledge mobilisation in children’s services, funded by the LG Group: Developing Interagency Working (DIW)

• Two studies of the work of Directors of Children's Services funded by the National College

• Current work with Oxfordshire preventative hubs

A Systemic Response (DCFS 2010)

All services must contribute to early intervention, with the role of universal services especially crucial

2.31 Collectively, schools, colleges, Sure Start Children’s Centres and GP practices – and professionals who work in them, including health visitors, paediatricians, teachers and non-teaching staff in schools and colleges – have contact with almost all children and young people. Universal services and settings are often the places where emerging difficulties can be first spotted, or where children and young people or their families will themselves first ask for help.…

A Systemic Response (DfE 2011)

• ‘Leaders need to be able to know their organisations well and constantly identify what needs to be realigned in order to improve performance and manage change’ (Munro, 2011: 106)

• ….organisational culture needs to recognise “[t]he uncertainty inherent in the work” (Munro, 2011: 107)

Current challenges in relation to inter-professional working

• Long-term policy-led reconfiguration of services for children – creating combined specialist services

• Dramatic cuts in public sector funding from 2010

• Focus on children’s wellbeing at the same time as on their accessing curriculum etc.

Implications for Leadership

• Ensuring all staff recognise (different kinds of) vulnerability

• Allowing colleagues to be responsive without feeling responsible

• Having systems for monitoring vulnerability

• Knowing where to get help with the diagnosis as well as the response

The Dynamic Nature of Social Exclusion

• Social exclusion is disconnection from experiencing and contributing to what society offers

• Social exclusion is a dynamic: vulnerability results from interacting aspects of a child’s life

• Preventing social exclusion is to disrupt a child’s trajectory of vulnerability – putting in ‘protective factors’ such as stable relationships with adults

The Hardiker Continuum of Need (Hardiker, Exton and Barker 1996), (aka Tiers)

• First Level: (UNIVERSAL) Targets vulnerable groups and communities through programmes such as Sure Start.

• Second Level: (EARLY RISKS) Addresses early stress and families in temporary crisis or difficulties through short term, task-centred interventions and resources.

• Third Level: (SERIOUS RISK) Addresses serious stresses: risks of significant harm, family breakdown and entry into the Looked After Systems. Difficulties may be severe/acute or well-established.

• Fourth Level: (REHABILITATION) addresses a diverse group of issues; social breakdown; Looked after Children; abused children.

Keith Grint and ‘wicked issues’

• Wicked issues’ represent complex challenges which cannot readily be solved but are more frequently managed or contained.

• They frequently involve multiple stakeholders, each of whom brings a different perception of both the problem and strategies through which it may be addressed.

• Wicked problems require leadership that is focused on building capacity and promoting learning rather than a more straightforward application of a tried and tested solution.

The ‘bursting school’

‘…… if a child comes to school and they have come from a dreadful home situation where there is terrible violent crime and abuse and parenting is poor or non-existent because of addiction problems and so on and so forth and the kid hasn’t had much…can’t read or write to any standard that would allow him to access the curriculum. And it is true to say it can be awful out there, but you don’t have to fail in school because we have got this for you, that person is there for you, if this happens you can do that. And I think it’s a sanctuary.’

(Deputy Principal of a High School in the LIW study)

Bridging the school boundary

‘[T]here is a sense in which although the child is the same child outside and inside we sort of feel we can almost draw a boundary around the school and say when you are in here you can leave it at the gates or we can minimize the effects….I think we set ourselves a target which is almost unachievable, unattainable in the sense.... perhaps the way in which schools with others need to be bridging that boundary differently.’

(Educational Psychologist in the LIW study)

Recent Strategies Aimed at Early Intervention • Team Around the Child (TAC)

• Common Assessment Framework (CAF)

• Lead Practitioner (LP) Aim at preventing the child

moving up the ladder of need

HubTier 2

Social CareTiers 3 and 4

Schools (in local partnerships)

Home-school liaison workers

Link social worker

Seamless moves

TAC/CAF

Specific interventions

Other universal agencies

Other specialist agencies

What kinds of preventative services?

• Diverting children from crime• One to one counselling and support• Targeted play schemes • Sessions for fathers to strengthen the family• Building connections with whole families over

time• Helping with CAF……

A Case Study School – Edwards et al. (2010)

The Policy Direction –fluid and responsive horizontal inter-professional working

• Mulgan: a policy shift to networks and projects and away from ‘traditional structures’ – ‘horizontal structures are essential to complement vertical ones’ (2005:184)

• Christiansen and Lægreid: horizontal working between agencies needs ‘…[c]ooperative effort and cannot be easily imposed from the top down’

‘[T]he role of a successful reform agent is to operate more as a gardener than as an engineer or an architect’ (2007:1063).

Horizontal Working

• ‘I rang (the educational welfare officer). She felt we should do a joint home visit. I was in contact with dad on the phone regularly. We did a joint visit emphasising that we wanted to support dad in getting his lad back to school. He had two older brothers who were at home because they had been excluded. I was able to contact their mentor at their school to see what was going on because I felt that was having an effect on the family. I spoke with the headteacher and we arranged a plan to get him back into school…’

(Family worker in the LIW study)

Different motives in different practices

‘We need to be looking far more carefully at precisely what difficulties exist…. And then recognise the paradigms that a whole range of professionals and voluntary sectors want to work from. Education has its particular paradigm, medicine has a particular paradigm and the voluntary social work. Those sort of paradigms inform how people operate and their expectations.’

(Educational Psychologist in LIW study)

Understanding each others’ motives

‘ [I] think the very first step is understanding about what the sort of issues are….Professions have very, very different ideas about need, about discipline, about responsibility, about the impact of systems on families…So I think the first step is actually to get some shared understanding about effective practices and about understanding the reasons behind some of them. Understanding some of the reasons why we are seeing these sorts of issues in families.’

(Practitioner doing inter-professional work in NECF)

Resourceful Leadership

Developing and using the available resources:

• within the school

•beyond the school

Implications for Leadership

• Wicked problems require leadership that is focused on building capacity and promoting learning rather than a more straightforward application of a tried and tested solution

• Recognising that small acts make a difference for children• Bringing in others as resources• Being a resource for others• Helping colleagues collaborate with the external resources

and with families• Sustaining the focus on teaching i.e. the expertise of the

school

Distributed Expertise in Inter-professional Work (see Edwards 2010)

Expertise is located and developed in specific practices such as social work, educational psychology and teaching.

Children’s services contain a great deal of distributed expertise, including the expertise that is held in families.

Complex problems call for several forms of expertise to be brought into play to interpret and respond to them.

A key to successful leadership is recognising and mobilising and enhancing the expertise distributed across local systems.

Knowledge for New Inter-professional Practices (Edwards et al. 2009)

Seeing the whole child in the wider context

‘Knowing how to know’ other professionals

Working relationally and responsively with other professionals

Helping other professionals to understand what matters for you

Being professionally multi-lingual

Making your own professional values and expertise explicit

Evetts on Public Sector Professions

• Organisational professionalism – a way of monitoring and controlling professional work

• Occupational professionalism – led by the professions, knowledge, values, relationships etc.

A study of DCS and their leadership role

A priority for all Directors of Children’s Services is to negotiate and promote a common understanding of what children’s services are actually for, i.e. to build the common public narrative that promotes a collective vision and supports vulnerable children, young people and families.

Implications for PS Leadership

• Knowing the local public narrative

• Contributing to it and shaping it

• Building it into school strategy

• Helping colleagues work with it in their interactions with children, families and other professionals

Building the Narrative

• The interviews based on the template returns explored the DCS’s views on learning and how they supported it.

• Their responses focused on *outcomes for children and families*personal purposes/motives* pathways forward

...empathy throughout – mediating different positions and priorities, linking conversations to outcomes for learners in schools, drawing everyone into a common theme, explaining but being relentless in my focus on the quality of learning

I used my presentation by telling stories that described where we wanted to go, building on best-evidenced practice and that there has never been a greater time for collaborative working rather than a defence silomentality. You need to be part of the re-setting

and reset yourself. You need to tell a grand vision story and enable people to see their pathways. It is not as linear as you would like.

Leading for Learning

The DCS were:• impressively pedagogical• role models; listeners; goal setters• worked with the affective ‘what mattered’ for

their colleagues• used the narrative as a strategic tool

A Narrative as a Leadership Tool

• Consists of ‘what matters’ for each person – allows for the individual ‘drops of creativity’ that arise when colleagues respond to children

• The leader gives the first draft and helps people shape and reshape it

• It gives stability when dealing with vulnerability

Some Key Lessons

• Schools, as a universal service, are where vulnerability is most likely to be spotted

• Vulnerability can be a dynamic state which requires a multi-agency response

• Practitioners should see themselves as part of systems of distributed expertise working on children’s trajectories – with distinct roles

• Teachers and school staff do not need to tackle problems in isolation• Senior teams can help build bridges which bring resources into

schools

What all teachers need to know and be able to do

• Be confident in their own expertise

• Be alert to signs of vulnerability

• To know where in the school to take their concerns about a child (know how to know who in the school)

• Know about the local (external) system of inter-professional support for vulnerable children

• Know the limits of their expertise and what is expected of them

• Know how to let other practitioners take the lead with a child (e.g. reduce curriculum pressure if child is distressed)

What school leaders need to know and be able to do

• Know how to know who can i.e. understand the expertise distributed in the local system including the VCS

• Focus on the child’s trajectory and negotiate how to work on it with other professionals and parents

• Be professionally multi-lingual

• Ensure that junior colleagues don’t feel isolated and responsible for a child's well-being

• Be clear about what the school can and can’t do

• Avoid being the ‘superhero’ and instead see themselves as part of a wider system of distributed expertise

References

• Canwell, A., Hannan, S., Longfils, H., & Edwards, A. (2011). Resourceful leadership: how directors of children's services improve outcomes for children. Nottingham: National College for Leadership of Schools and Children's Services.

• Christensen, T., Laegreid, P. (2007). The whole of government approach to public service reform. Public Administration Review, November/December, 1059-1066.

• Daniels, H. & Edwards, A. (2012). Leading for learning: how the intelligent leader builds capacity. Nottingham: National College for School Leadership and Children's Services.

• Edwards, A. (2010) Being an expert professional practitioner: the relational turn in expertise Dordrecht, Springer.

• Edwards, A., Daniels, H., Gallagher, T., Leadbetter, J. and Warmington, P. (2009) Improving inter- professional collaborations: multi-agency working for children’s wellbeing. London: Routledge.

• Edwards, A., Lunt, I. and Stamou, E. (2010) Inter-professional Work and Expertise: new roles at the boundaries of schools, British Educational Research Journal, 36, 1. 27-45.

• Evetts, J. (2003). The sociological analysis of professionalism, International Sociology. 18(3) 395-415.

• Mulgan, G. (2005). Joined-up government; past, present and future. In V. Bogdanor (Ed.) Joined up government. Oxford: OUP.

• Munro, E. (2011) The Munro Review of Child Protection: final report a child-centred system. London: DfE.