Samarbeid mellom tjenester. «Multi-agency working for children's well being.» Prof. Harry Daniels, University of Bath

Harry Daniels is Professor of Education: Culture and Pedagogy at the University of Bath, where he is the Convenor in Head of the 'Learning as Culture and Social Practice' Research Programme and also the Director of the Centre for Socio-cultural and Activity Theory Research (CSAT), dedicated to the development and application of socio-cultural and activity theory. He is Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Learning Research at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia and is also Research Professor at the Centre for Human Activity Theory at Kansai University, Osaka in Japan.

Multi-agency working for childrens well being Harry Daniels University of Bath

Overview The study in its policy context Learning challenges for practitioners What practitioners were learning as they developed inter-professional work New forms of expertise Collaborating on complex problems Organisational implications Leadership implications

The Dynamic Nature of Social Exclusion 1990s OECD discussions – view of child as at risk of being unable to contribute to society Social exclusion is disconnection from experiencing and contributing to what society offers Social exclusion is a dynamic: vulnerability results from interacting aspects of a childs life. A complex problem needs a complex response Preventing social exclusion is early intervention to disrupt a childs trajectory of vulnerability

Theories of Work

Craft Tacit Knowledge Mass Production Articulated knowledge Process Enhancement Practical Knowledge Mass Customisation Architectural knowledge Co-configuration Renewal Development Linking Modularisation Networking

Co-configuration includes interdependency between multiple producers in a strategic alliance or other pattern of partnership which collaboratively creates and maintains a complex package which integrates products and services and has a long life cycle. Co-configuration includes interdependency between multiple producers in a strategic alliance or other pattern of partnership which collaboratively creates and maintains a complex package which integrates products and services and has a long life cycle.

Knotworking is a rapidly changing, distributed and partially improvised orchestration of collaborative performance takes place between otherwise loosely connected actors and their work systems to support clients. various forms of tying and untying of otherwise separate threads of activity takes place. Co-configuration in responsive and collaborating services requires flexible knotworking no single actor has the sole, fixed responsibility and control

Knotworking requires participants to have a disposition to recognise and engage with the expertise distributed across rapidly shifting professional groupings.

Theories of Learning in New Forms of Work

theories of learning subject (traditionally an individual, more recently possibly also an organization) acquires some identifiable knowledge or skills in such a way that a corresponding, relatively lasting change in the behaviour of the subject may be observed. knowledge or skill to be acquired is itself stable and reasonably well defined. There is a competent teacher who knows what is to be learned.

People and organizations are all the time learning something that is not stable, not even defined or understood ahead of time. important transformations -- literally learned as they are being created. There is no competent teacher.

Expansive learning Such learning occurs in situations where professionals are learning something that has not been created or constructed before. This implies that knowledge they are acquiring is constantly changing and they are not necessarily finding a solution to the problem but are redefining the problems themselves

Learning something that isnt there yet You know, if you use the …analogy of a jigsaw, not of a painting …if you were painting a garden, wed be doing very elaborate daffodils and painting an oak tree and stuff like that this but we dont actually know the dimensions of the garden yet and what weve got to do is to define the scope in which people can make decisions. (Local Authority B)

Approaches to Learning Learning as acquisition and application Learning as participation in social practices Learning as transformation – of self and of world (the approach taken in LIW)

Learning as Transformation Learning involves internalising the ideas that are culturally valued and externalising them We are shaped by our cultures but also shape them by our actions on them As we are shaped by and shape our worlds both we and they are changed

Learning as Interpretation and Response Acting on our worlds involves interpreting e.g. a childs trajectory and responding to that interpretation In interagency work to prevent social exclusion it also involves recognising that other professionals will interpret that trajectory differently and will respond to it differently Practitioners learn from others interpretations: giving expanded interpretations of the trajectory

Learning and Motivation How e.g. a childs trajectory is interpreted reveals a lot about what is valued in a professional culture An interpretation elicits professional responses which reveal what is permitted in an organisation Professional action needs to be examined within an analysis of the organisation in which it occurs

New Contexts for Work and New Tools for the Job

Boundaries Crossing Communicating Changing Vertical and horizontal

New work – new tools what, how, why where to

The aim of the research To identify What are professionals learning in order to do inter-professional work? What forms of interpersonal and organisational practice are associated with that learning?

Five Stages of LIW Project

Learning Challenges for Practitioners in Stage Two Included: Recognising how other practitioners interpret childrens trajectories and seeing increased complexity Recognising how other professionals respond to their interpretations Knowing how to work with other professionals while respecting their expertise Knowing how to work outside the safety of their institutional shelters

Learning Challenges for Organisations in Stage Two Included: Enabling people to collaborate across institutional boundaries Enabling them to work responsively with other practitioners and with children and families

Database for the presentation Three longitudinal (21 month) case studies at Stage 4: using intervention sessions designed to stimulate thinking and talking about inter-professional work, plus interviews throughout the period A Multi Professional Team with services around an extended school Analyses tested in regional workshops across England with participants six months after final sessions in the NI extension project funded by TLRP

Rule bending and risk taking Example: Education Welfare Officer and Educational Psychologist having discussion about placement of child who was being bullied in school; a practice which was outside agreed referral processes Contradiction: Between old rules and new division of labour (MPT) Resolution: Justification of bending the old rules (expanding the moral-ideological object) and leading to questioning the existing system

So- innovatory work place learning gets lost Rule breaking operation. Rule enforcing strategy Operational staff recognise need to inform strategy but unwilling to do it – not me not how I see myself – witnessed at all levels of structure Operation reports with compliant accounts but acts in new, but hidden ways Strategy remains unaware of evolving operational practice and thus unable to comment on / supervise new developments which remain unseen and highly situated

The Challenge: Distributed Expertise in Mobile Systems Practitioners were working between organisational boundaries doing new forms of work which were not sustained by existing practices They needed to see themselves as parts of local systems of distributed expertise Childrens trajectories change and practitioners had to follow them, work responsively with the child and each other

Knowledge in Use in New Inter- professional Practices (1) Seeing the whole child in the wider context Knowing how to know other professionals Working relationally and responsively with other professionals – relational agency Helping other professionals to understand – being pedagogic with others Being professionally multi-lingual – pressing the right buttons

Knowledge in Use in New Inter- professional Practices (2) Making professional values, motives and expertise explicit Be able to bend rules (work on changing the system) if they get in the way of being responsive to a childs needs (Glissen and Hemmelgarn 1998) Be able to make and rework the tools (resources) they use to support children's trajectories An enhanced form of professionalism - not the all- purpose worker

Relational Agency in Inter-professional Work Interpreting a childs trajectory alongside other practitioners to reveal its complexity Understanding how other practitioners will interpret the trajectory Negotiating priorities for action Recognising what others bring to the action Making what you bring visible to others Negotiating responses to interpretations

New Forms of Expertise for Inter- professional Work Experts must now extend their knowledge… to building links and trying to integrate what they know with what others want to or should know and do (Nowotny, 2003:155) Knowing how to reveal their motives and expertise and understand those of others An additional set of expertise which augments core professional expertise

Know-who is not enough Need core expertise to be able to interpret a childs trajectory (cf emergent role of welfare managers in schools) Need to spend time on making values and motives visible as a prerequisite for flexible responsive work with vulnerable children

Professional hybridities and organisational structures individual specialists strong boundaries and control (contract cultures) coordinated collection of specialists in the field (strategic development) professional practice of strong boundaries between services and their professional values coordinated by strategy. a hybrid collection of workers who drew on the primary strengths of their colleagues (local balkanisation?). weak boundaries and control -- weakened through rule breaking and bending

Culture and accountabilityWeak accountabilityStrong accountability Underdeveloped sense of culture Permissive individualism Corrosive individualism Culture imposed from aboveContrived collegialityPerformance training sects Culture developedCollaborative culturesProfessional learning communities

Professional learning communitiesPerformance training sects Transform knowledgeTransfer knowledge Shared inquiryImposed requirements Evidence informedResults driven Situated certaintyFalse certainty Local solutionsStandardized scripts Joint responsibilityDeference to authority Continuous learningIntensive training Communities of practiceSects of performance

Implications for Organisations 1 Organise in a way that allows strategy to listen and learn with operation: beyond the rhetorical consultation Structures and processes that derive their rationale from purposes: after Glissen and Hemmelgarn (1998) and our rule-bending findings Analyse rule systems for future rather than letting legacies of the past dominate the future

Implications for Organisations 2 Structure the division of labour (vertical and horizontal) to align with new demands Organise for regular purposeful reflection oriented to surfacing underlying tensions in practices and the development of new tools for new tasks Organise to articulate objects (what needs to be worked on) rather than outcomes alone

Promoting a learning system – the Munro review of child protection The current system is too preoccupied with procedure and insufficiently focused on childrens needs View of childrens services as a learning and adaptive system Leadership committed to promoting learning but remaining accountable

The Aim To reveal what effective Directors of Childrens Services do to create learning cultures and learning practices which are aimed at promoting good outcomes for children across all levels of need. i.e. the actions they take to build capacity and why they take them.

Today Three stages: (i) developing a model of learning in childrens services; (ii) testing the model with a small group of senior leaders in childrens services; and (iii) using the model as a framework for collecting evidence about the work the senior leaders do to create a culture of learning

Outline Key ideas in the model Framework for examining the work of DCS Working resourcefully to take forward strategy

The Aim To reveal what effective Directors of Childrens Services do to create learning cultures and learning practices which are aimed at promoting good outcomes for children across all levels of need. i.e. the actions they take to build capacity and why they take them.

Three stages: (i) developing a model of learning in childrens services; (ii) testing the model with a small group of senior leaders in childrens services; and (iii) using the model as a framework for collecting evidence about the work the senior leaders do to create a culture of learning

Outline Key ideas in the model Framework for examining the work of DCS Working resourcefully to take forward strategy

Phase III Provision of a simple template to gather actions in activities in practices Collection of two examples of actions in activities per week c 16 examples for each DCS to support a telephone interview into their understandings of learning and what they do to create learning organisations. Mapping of these examples onto the model of the learning demands

Questions: Two examples from each participant Very briefly describe one everyday activity this week where you were aware that you were promoting learning What did you do during the activity i.e. what actions did you take? What are the long term strategic goals behind how you worked with colleagues in this activity? How do your actions in this activity relate to these goals?

The data collection template Levels of analysisExamples 1. The activities that DCS engage in: a focus on the kind of work that DCS undertake and how they relate to strategic purposes 2. The actions that DCS take in those activities: a focus on how and why they do what they do 3. The practice of strategic leadership: a focus on long and short-term purpose

The Strategies used to Promote Learning Not a formulaic linear system of actions DCS engage in deliberative action as they seek to lead different types of learning with different groups of individuals engaged in response to different types of problem / challenge We identified the following types of leadership for learning action Directing Translating Knitting Enabling Questioning Coaching Facilitating Collaborating

Key findings Leadership for learning is intelligent leadership: it demands the intelligent use of leadership behaviours and strategies to address two fundamental learning challenges Why intelligent leadership? 1. Focuses on intelligence not information 2. Intelligently connects the operational and the strategic

Learning Challenges Processes for leading learning Behaviours for leading learning The model of intelligent leadership The focus for IL The strategy for IL The practice of IL

1.The learning challenges The focus for intelligent leadership Building capacity to support the organisational priorities Designing learning systems Common Knowledge Organisational narrative Promote the flow of learning Responsive to tensions and contradictions

What common knowledge exists between providers of childrens services in your area? Where does this need to be developed further? Building Capacity Do the systems in your context provide the time and space to share intelligence… [a] across organisations? [b] between practitioners and policymakers? Designing learning systems 1.The learning challenges The focus for intelligent leadership

2. The processes for leading learning The strategy for intelligent leadership Learning Challenges Behaviours for leading learning Processes for leading learning Learning Challenges Behaviours for leading learning The strategy for IL Processes for leading learning

2.The processes for leading learning The strategy for intelligent leadership Response What leadership best supports the resolution of the issue? Recognition What is the learning challenge? What knowledge is needed to address this? Who needs to be involved? Reflection Whats working? Whats not? Why? Facilitating intelligent change

Learning Challenges Behaviours for leading learning Processes for leading learning 3.The behaviours for leading learning The practice of intelligent leadership Learning Challenges Processes for leading learning The practice of IL Behaviours for leading learning

3.The behaviours for leading learning The practice of intelligent leadership Behaviours for leading learning DirectingQuestioning Pulling together Translating Taking the standpoint of others EnablingCoachingFacilitatingCollaborating

Supporting Individual learning DirectingQuestioning Pulling together Translating Taking the standpoint of others EnablingCoachingFacilitatingCollaborating Supporting individuals learning I explored his leadership style – the activities he was comfortable with and those he was not. Considered how others perceived this. Discussed how certain problems might be handled differently if some of his behaviours were modified. 3.The behaviours for leading learning The practice of intelligent leadership I was there at the meeting as a safety net as it was the first time for them to chair it.

Supporting cultural learning DirectingQuestioning Pulling together Translating Taking the standpoint of others EnablingCoachingFacilitatingCollaborating Supporting cultural learning Risk, safe and supervision mean different things. Sometimes vocabulary gets in the way. So I say what is best for young people now and in the future. In the future is important. Then I play it back to people and say, Can you help me here? What can you do?. I make a great play of listening skills and not being judgemental. I do deep listening and try to transpose myself into how others are listening… I try to understand where people are coming from – their agenda and motives. 3.The behaviours for leading learning The practice of intelligent leadership

Supporting system learning DirectingQuestioning Pulling together Translating Taking the standpoint of others EnablingCoachingFacilitatingCollaborating Supporting system learning In a meeting I might stand back and let the process work its way through. Find common ground and get things aligned and pull things together so we can come back to it again. 3.The behaviours for leading learning The practice of intelligent leadership I asked a series of challenging questions about the use of resources, budget profiling, monitoring and impact on outcomes.

Think of an individual who youve helped improve professionally. What steps did you encourage them to take? What more could you do in the future? Supporting Individual learning What blockers are there in the system which prevent professionals in your area from helping children and families? What can be done to reduce these? Supporting System learning What steps do you take to increase empathy and understanding of different professionals roles in your authority? How could you develop this further? Supporting Cultural learning 3.The behaviours for leading learning The practice of intelligent leadership

In conclusion - the model of intelligent leadership Individual learning Facilitating Coaching Enabling Collaborating Cultural learning Taking the standpoint of others Translating System learning Directing Questioning Pulling together Learning Challenges Behaviours for leading learning Processes for leading learning Recognition Questioning practice Examining practice Response Formulating & modelling solutions Implementing solutions Reflection Reflection and realigning purposes Learning Challenges Processes for leading learning Behaviours for leading learning Designing learning systems Building capacity

Reflection and Support Reflection in Practice Individual : Time is often set aside by DCS for systematic reflection Reflection with others: through inviting peer challenge and shadowing opportunities. Reflection on practice Continuation of the action learning sets which they encounter on their NCSL training. Systematic use of peer reflection with other DCS. External professional coaches are employed by LA for the DCS.

Leading Learning 1. Recognition of the challenge what type of problem does the service face what kind of data are required if this problem is to be fully understood what kind of learning does the DCS seek to lead in response to this problem. 2. Response – using a repertoire of resources What kinds of leadership actions are best suited to this challenge? Which of the actions in the DCS repertoire should be invoked? 3. Reflection and Support Conscious reflection on whether the right decisions were made by the leader Reflecting and arranging the kind of support that would: - enhance the repertoire - make responsive decision making more effective