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The aim of this proposal is to enhance the interaction between agencies dealing with young people at risk of exclusion from school. It builds on and extends an existing TLRP project on interagency working based in the University of Birmingham.The rationale for a Northern Ireland extension is that problems in interagency working are as relevant to Northern Ireland as other parts of the United Kingdom and that it provides a different context in terms of the range and responsibilities of agencies, and greater community sector involvement.
The project is based on the theoretical framework provided by Activity Theory which is being extended and developed by the Birmingham team. This framework highlights the distinctive conditions of interagency working and the need to develop processes of expansive learning in conditions of co-configuration.
The Birmingham project is proceeding in five stages. By the end of stage 3 it will have discussed and refined a model of learning in and for co-configuration in multiagency work; identified knowledge tools and strategies to enhance professional learning; trialled the feasibility of a focus on young people’s education and care plans as a means of accessing evidence about professional practices and their development; and identified some of the outcomes of current practices for young people to inform the next stage.
This next stage will follow a sample of cases in which young people move along pathways in which a number of different agencies play a role, to collect ethnographic data on these processes, to implement the knowledge tools and strategies derived from the previous stage and to evaluate their utility. The present project will implement an additional sample of cases reflecting the distinctive conditions of Northern Ireland to add variability to the overall analysis.
The final stage involves the examination of the derived models in a wider context and the development of networks to sustain the learning from the project.
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