communication and multi agency working
i took part in some great training a couple of weeks ago, it was called Learning from serious case reviews. there was mainly colleagues from childrens services and out of 150people i think there was only a handful of workers from adults services me being one. joint training like that should definitely be encouraged as it is there we find out and understand the challenges we all face in trying to do our jobs, for example some colleagues in childrens services were surprised to find out that if our service users in mental health don't want to engage with us we cannot make them, unless of course they are under some sort of obligation under the Mental Health Act like Supervised Community Treatment but this is rare in my area. i was reminded how challenging it is for childrens social workers trying to glean information about children and their families from different professionals who dont always have the children as the focus of their work, and not to discredit all GP's here but they seem to be the main offenders so as an aside i was pleased to see that in the serious case review that came out of Sheffield today a recommendation is that GP's have to engage in more child protection training.
anyway another thing that came out of the training which i found to be very interesting is the aspect of communication. the lady leading the training is an author of many a serious case review and she said that from what she understands from the reviews she has done recently is that sharing of information is happening between agencies but what the real issue appears to be is that what someone says can often be interpreted differently by the receiver of the information as we all perceive things differently and when you add in people from different professional backgrounds with their own languages you can understand how things go awry. it's obvious stuff really but when you are working at full speed it's not often you get to reflect on these things which makes training important and time for reflection important too.
a quick example of the different language different professionals use is DV in childrens services this is taken to mean domestic violence, in physical health and hospitals this is taken to mean diarrohea and vomiting and in my mental health team DV means domestic violence!