Taking advantage of dissonance: the development of a CPD model for a children’s integrated service

Abstract

The delivery of welfare, health and educational support provision to the majority of children aged between nought and eighteen years of age in England is led by local authorities via their children’s integrated service. When launched in 2004 this service model promised the benefits of integrated and collaborative working in terms of flexibility and responsiveness to national policy, local development and capacity building (Robinson et al., 2008). However, the implementation and ongoing maturation of this service model over a period of more than a decade has been marred by conflict, capital and co-operation. Using the key terms of the conference theme, this presentation will communicate the findings of an empirical research project based on a real world problem that involved the development of a CPD framework for a children’s integrated service workforce. The presentation will highlight a range of ongoing multi-faceted conflicts that include: the rhetoric of joined up working and co-operation verses the reality; the jarring of professional cultures amongst frontline practitioners, and strategic leadership that failed to appreciate the need for consensus building. The presentation will then move on to look at the human capital of the children’s integrated service and how it can be effectively steered towards creativity and productivity through an organisational wide CPD framework that not only embraces the contradictions and misunderstandings that ensue when different professions work together, but also promotes a learning environment that takes advantage of such dissonance and can incorporate the hybrid of professional practice and expertise