Interprofessional and inter-agency collaboration (IPIAC)

These e-Learning resources are freely available to all. They provide audio, video and interactive technology to assist in exploring the nature of interprofessional and inter-agency collaboration and in improving collaborative practice.

Click on a title below to open the resource.

Screenshot	Title	Description
	An introduction to interprofessional and inter-agency collaboration	The nature of collaboration, why it is important, its purposes and its growing place in policy and practice
	Professional identity and collaboration	Professional identities and difference, models of practice and ways of sustaining one’s identity and practice within collaborative relationships
	Building relationships, establishing trust and negotiating with other workers	Making initial contact, developing relationships, trust, values, conflict, barriers, self-assessment
	Working together to assess needs, strengths and risks	What is assessment, and it’s importance; considering the contributions of other professionals when undertaking an assessment; balancing needs, strengths and risks using a family scenario and their neighbourhood networks.
	A model of practice and collaboration	The multiple spheres of practice and collaboration - interpersonal, interprofessional, inter-disciplinary team, inter-agency and community –explored using a ‘model’ and people’s experiences
	Working collaboratively in different types of teams	Types of teams, networks, organisations, images, group and team development, roles
	The practitioner, the agency and inter-agency collaboration	How agencies shape professional roles and supply key resources, the interdependence of agencies and professionals, and the importance of inter-agency collaboration in supporting and safeguarding service users
	Key policy and legislation with implications for interprofessional and inter-agency collaboration (IPIAC): a timeline of examples 1968-2008	A timeline of collaboration-related policy, commissioned reports and legislation in England and Wales with additional examples relating to people who use care services and to carers

Who they are suitable for:

These resources are suitable for students studying for the social work degree and post-qualifying awards, educators, and practitioners in social work and social care. The resources may also be useful to practitioners and students from other disciplines and may interest people who use social care services and carers who are not directly involved as educators.

About the authors:

Colin Whittington

Colin Whittington is a partner in whittingtonconsultants.co.uk. Clients include local and national organisations (DH, SCIE, CAIPE UK) and individual managers and professionals. He researched interprofessional and inter-agency learning for his PhD and wrote the partnership component of the first national training strategy for social care. He has published widely in this area and others, such as assessment for SCIE Guide 18 (2007). A registered social worker with experience as a practitioner, team manager and teacher, he has held fellowships at Keele University and King’s College London and senior positions in social work education and research. His consultancy includes collaborative practice, inter-agency partnership, educational research and individual mentoring.

Judith Thomas

Judith Thomas is a Principal Lecturer at the University of the West of England, Bristol. She has managed various educational developments including the BSc (Hons) Social Work and Post Qualifying Programmes in practice education. Judith is a co-editor of Interprofessional Working in Health and Social Care and also of Understanding Interprofessional Working in Health and Social Care: Theory and Practice both published by Palgrave. Judith is a qualified and registered social worker. As a practitioner, she has worked in residential child care, community care, mental health and staff development. Her particular educational and research interests are in practice learning, interprofessional learning and working and the education of critically reflective practitioners.

Anne Quinney

Anne Quinney is a Senior Lecturer at Bournemouth University and teaches on the BA (Hons) Social Work degree. She is the author of Collaborative Social Work Practice, published by Learning Matters, and is the Editor of the Routledge/BASW journal Practice: social work in action. Anne is a qualified and registered social worker. As a social work practitioner she has worked in the areas of mental health and child care and has also practised as a youth worker. Anne’s research areas are collaborative practice, interprofessional education, elearning, and research-minded practice.

Acknowledgements:

SCIE would like to thank the following people:

Our peer reviewers: June Sadd, Anne Farmer, Tony Leiba and Mark Lymbery.
Margaret Whittington of whittingtonconsultants.co.uk for contributions to several resources in this IPIAC series and for co-authoring the Key Policy and Legislation timeline.

Technical development:

Programming and graphic design by EPIC Ltd.

Copyright

All material in these e-learning resources, including text, graphics, photographs, video and audio is copyright of the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), unless otherwise stated. Use of these resources, and import of the resources into learning management systems, for educational purposes is freely permitted, but commercial use of this learning resource is not authorised unless permission is first obtained from SCIE.

Images and audio

The majority of the images and voices used in this resource are those of actors. This approach has been adopted to protect the identities of the service users and carers whose accounts have been drawn upon or the accounts have been based on situations indicative of the events or issues being covered.