Report of the Working Party on Social Work Support for the Health Service, June 1974.

  • Great Britain. Working Party on Social Work Support for the Health Service.
Date:
1974
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Report of the Working Party on Social Work Support for the Health Service, June 1974. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/76 (page 11)
    CHAPTER 1 | THE REALITIES OF COLLABORATION 1. The broad aim of collaboration between health authorities and local authorities is not controversial. The reports of the Working Party on Collabora- tion* discuss many possibilities for the co-ordination of services and the sharing of skills and resources in ways which can be to the advantage of both sides. But habits of joint working and joint planning will not come easily or without deliberate effort. In our study we have been looking at collaboration at its basic level—the working together of people of different professions in service to patients and clients. The organisational arrangements that have been adopted to promote collaboration in management and planning—matching of area health authority and local authority areas, Joint Consultative Committees, and sO on—are important, since without them the two separate systems will lack the necessary framework within which collaboration can develop. These arrange- ments can promote a climate for collaboration. But they will not succeed unless there also develops a habit of collaboration between doctors, nurses, social workers and others in day-to-day working. This rests ultimately on the growth of understanding and confidence between individuals. 2. All our experience during our work, both in visits and in discussions, has tended to throw into relief differences in attitudes and expectations which can only be obstacles to true collaboration at this basic level. Fortunately these are matched by much goodwill and a genuine anxiety to break down barriers and to see services interlock better. While much of our work has necessarily been concerned with questions of organisation and management, we have also been told a good deal about the “facts of life’? at working level: we hope that some initial reflections on these will help towards the development of new habits of mind and better understanding. 3. Changes in professional attitudes will take time, and perhaps the first general point to be made is that the world will not have been changed on 1 April 1974. But changes will have to follow in the following months and years if the full benefits of collaboration are to be seen in better care of individual patients. Reorganisation is a catalyst which will precipitate many changes: part of our object is to expose some of the issues which we think members of the various professions should bear in mind as they adjust to the new situation. * In addition to the Working Party’s report on its activities to the end of 1972, referred to in paragraph (ii) of the Introduction, a second report covering the Working Party’s further work up to July 1973 has been published. A third and final report will be published shortly. Topics covered in these reports include: First report — machinery for collaboration sharing of professional skills environmental health services school health services Second report — supplies services building and engineering services management services and statistics ancillary services Third report — financial arrangements arrangements for collaboration in London 1