Interagency Practice and Outcomes
for Adolescents in Addiction and
Social Services
Presenters; Robert O’Driscoll & Miriam Keogh
Research Team; Liam McCarthy (AC), Trisha Mc
Shane (SW), Helena Horgan Khan (SW) Barry
Corkery (AC) Keith Duff (SW)
Wednesday, 08 April 2015
Presentation overview
• Aims of the research and a description of the
research process
• Show you some interesting data from
interviews and workshops
• Connect this to our preliminary findings
• Articulate an emerging theory
We all like to think the way we
do it is the right way
http://www.ted.com/talks/terry_moore_how_to_tie
_your_shoes.html#.TrOA0dv97-U.mailto
The aim of the research is;
• To enhance the outcomes for adolescent service users
who are concurrently open to addiction and social
services.
• To transform the interagency and inter-disciplinary
practice of practitioners working with this client-group
• To advance the recommendations of the Ryan Report
(2009)
• To assess the methodological potential of CHAT and
DWR to contribute to the enhancement of professional
practice
Data Evolution
Young Person
Interviews
Professional
Interviews
Young Person
Change Laboratory
Professional
1
Interviews(Focus Group)Interviews
Change
Change Laboratory
Laboratory 12
(Focus
(Focus Group)
Group)
Change Laboratory 23
(Focus Group)
Change Laboratory 4
(Focus Group)
Cultural Historical Activity Theory
Client Inclusion
• “I have a fairly clear idea of what people do, I
don’t think that’s true for our young people or our
clients. I think that we often don’t explain our
services as well as we should, you just presume
that they know it and you just move onto the next
topic”.
• “We’re just not being listened to, like, what we
need, the social workers think they know
everything but everyone is different, like”.
Interagency tasking
• “I’ll be honest about ourselves anyway, I'm not
going to speak about any other agency, but we do
bad mouth other agencies from time to time, you
know in discussion”
• “ Ye call them case conferences, we call ours
allocation meetings. We discuss new cases as they
come in. We discuss them in our own bubble….
And nobody from outside of that bubble is
allowed in. So we come away what we are going
to do with this young person based on our bubble”
Interagency tasking
• “We had a conversation about a referral and I
remember saying that we didn’t have a formal
interagency policy drawn up with your agency.
Regardless, in the interests of the client and if the
client is the centre of our focus we would just go
through any obstacles that arise. It actually worked
out well.”
Assessment
• “there are so many variables to be taken into
consideration when doing an assessment, so I
think in the very first place, the assessment of
young people is probably the most important
thing, not just looking at their use, and I am
concerned that, in my experience of some young
people in the past it was a tick box exercise”
Competencies
• “but there isn’t actually a huge emphasis on me
developing myself in terms of, you know, how I
engage with other agencies or how I engage with
other families”
• “I think spaces that are provided for people to take
their hats off and just say, “Look, this is where it’s
at with me”, do you know what I mean? More
opportunity for that to kind of actually happen in a
real way, so whether that’s kind of done through
you know, maybe … practitioner forums … where
people can come and sit and just kind of put out
their practice issues”
What are we finding?
• Our research participants indicated that more was needed
for effective interagency working
• We have the legislation, policy, best practice guidelines
and infrastructure
• We know what facilitates and inhibits interagency practice
(Buckley 1997, 2003b)
• Trust and understanding each others values and ways of
working, good communication and confidentiality are
important factors
What changed?
• Rules around blaming other agencies or
practitioners for problems with cases
• Revisiting -introduction of a pre-assessment and
referral forms
• Interagency training aiming to align system wide
change in practices
• More contact between agencies and individual
practitioners
What else
• Planned interagency visits
• A practitioner tool for monitoring personal
practice in interagency activity
What do our findings suggest
• CHAT as a lens for systemically analysing work
practices has been useful to develop SW and AT
practice
• Centrality of the client and family for effective
interagency work to take place
• DWR worked as a neutral reflective space to
discuss practice facilitates practice development
Limitations and directions for
future research
• Timeframe
• Further DWR workshops to consolidate
changes to practice
Contact details
• Arbour House Research Team; Robert
O’Driscoll & Liam McCarthy, Barry Corkery
• 021-4968933 liam.mccarthy@hse.ie
• North Lee Research Team; Miriam Keogh,
Helena Horgan Khan, Keith Duff, Trisha Mc
Shane
• 021-4927000 miriam.keogh@hse.ie