Working with or against each other? How statutory and non-statutory child welfare workers perceive their relationships with each others’ agencies.
Gabrielle Meagher and Karen Healy
University of Sydney and University of Queensland
Contact Email: gmea9262
usyd.edu.au
Improving interagency collaboration has been a key focus of child and family welfare policy development in Australia and elsewhere for more than a decade. For the non-government child and family welfare agencies who deliver the bulk of preventative family support services, the agency with which they are mostly likely work is the relevant statutory child welfare authority. Despite policy focus on enhancing relationships between non-government and statutory agencies in child welfare, evidence suggests that room for improvement remains. This paper reports the findings of a survey of 143 practitioners working in non-government family welfare agencies in two Australian states, and 66 practitioners in the statutory child welfare agency in one state. We explore how these practitioners evaluate their relationships with each others’ agencies. We find that assessments of the helpfulness-or otherwise-of another agency depend on the quality and extent of communication, the availability and accessibility of services and personnel, resource issues, and levels of respect for the different demands and priorities in each kind of organisation. We conclude with some recommendations for further improving interagency relationships in child and family welfare services.
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