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The purpose of this paper is to argue that the future of social work can be situated as part of a fundamental shift towards co-located, multi-disciplinary practice and networking. It is argued that social work has a key role to play in co-located, multi-disciplinary child welfare practice, and indeed can be a leading profession in this context. Situating social work in this way involves re-conceptualising social work as a network profession, rather than a silo profession. The paper builds on an earlier study of five multi-professional, co-located teams updated with interviews with social workers currently situated in such co-located teams. An exploration of the role of social work in relation to child sexual exploitation is provided.

The first study was an ESRC-funded study and used a multi-method approach to understanding the work of five multi-disciplinary, co-located teams working with children, young people and families (Frost and Robinson, 2016). Four co-located teams with eight social workers participated in the research. This was followed up by a small scale study involving semi-structured interviews with six social workers situated in co-located, multi-disciplinary teams. The focus of the study was on professional identity and working practices with other related professionals.

The ESRC study explored the complexity of co-located, multi-disciplinary professional teams – exploring how they worked together and analysing the challenges they face. Professionals felt that such working enhanced their learning, their skill base and the process of information sharing. Challenges included structural and organisational issues and differences in ideological and explanatory frameworks. The follow up study of six social workers found that they gained satisfaction from being situated in such co-located, multi-disciplinary teams, but also faced some identified challenges. Child sexual exploitation is explored as an example of the work of co-located, multi-disciplinary teams.

Semi-structured interviews with social workers based in co-located, multi-disciplinary teams have provided valuable insights into the operation of social workers in such settings. It is acknowledged that all the interviews are with social workers in co-located settings and that further work is required on the views of other social workers in reference to their experiences and views in relation to multi-disciplinary working.

The paper brings together theoretical positions and policy contextual material with qualitative research data which situate the social worker in wider multi-disciplinary, co-located settings. Drawing on qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 14 social workers in such teams, the paper aims to contribute to an understanding and development of the future of the social work role in these contexts, arguing that this is fundamental to the future of social work.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the utility of a redesigned course assessment in a required, introductory Master of Public Health (MPH) course to demonstrate competency achievement through practical application. School of public health curricula are informed by competency-based education (CBE) to prepare students for the field. This is a challenge in introductory courses as traditional assessments do not translate into practical application of knowledge.

This retrospective post-test-only evaluation examined a practice-based, multi-disciplinary assessment utilized in Fall 2014 (n = 63 students). Web-based surveys were administered three months after the course to participating students (n = 33), the teaching team or teaching teams (n = 7) and organization representatives (n = 3) to evaluate the utility of the assessment. Questions were analyzed descriptively using chi-square tests, where applicable responses were compared across groups.

Results indicate that a practice-based assessment in an introductory MPH course may enhance student learning by fostering deeper appreciation and application of course content while more closely reflecting the collaborative, multi-disciplinary and problem-solving nature of practice. The assessment may also increase the depth of competency achievement and career preparedness.

Institutions that are guided by CBE, train students for multi-disciplinary practice and are impacted by the changing landscape of the field may want to consider course assessments that mimic practice to best prepare students.

Course assessments should be evaluated to ensure they appropriately measure competency achievement. This evaluation provides multiple perspectives on the process and outcome of a practice-based course assessment.

The Mental Health Professionals’ Network (MHPN) was established to enhance collaborative care among health professionals working in mental health care in Australia. The MHPN has two primary arms: face-to-face network meetings and online webinars. The purpose of this paper is to investigate practice changes in health professionals who participated in one of MHPN’s live webinars.

Practice change was assessed by online survey with attendees from three MHPN webinars held in 2016. The survey link was e-mailed to webinar attendees three months after each webinar.

In total, 585 health professionals participated in the surveys. Four out of five respondents had made at least one practice change, particularly increased confidence in providing mental health care and increased discussions about other disciplines. General practitioners and psychologists were more likely than others to have made practice changes. Nine out of ten respondents rated the webinars as “very good” or “excellent.”

MHPN’s webinar program positively impacts health professionals’ practice and represents an easily accessible and effective professional development opportunity for Australia’s mental health workforce.

The MHPN webinar program is unique in Australia. The MHPN provides opportunities for interdisciplinary professional development in the primary mental health sector. The model is highly cost effective and transferable to other settings and countries.

This paper reports on insights from an evaluation of Birth Companions (BC) (a UK-based charity) perinatal support in two prison settings in England. The initiative involved the provision of group and/or one-to-one perinatal support and training women prisoners as peer supporters.

A mixed-methods study was undertaken that involved observations of support groups and peer support supervision sessions (n = 9); audio recorded interviews (n = 33) with prison and health-care staff, women in prison, peer supporters and BC staff; analysis of existing routinely collected data by BC and notes undertaken during regular meetings (n = 10) with the BC Project Manager. Thematic analysis was undertaken supported by MAXQDA qualitative data analysis software.

BC provided instrumental/practical support, emotional support, information support, signposting to services and advocating for women to the prison concerning their perinatal needs and rights. Key themes revealed that support had an impact on the lives of perinatal women by creating a safe place characterised by meaningful interactions and women-centred approaches that facilitated access to wider care and support. The service made a difference by empowering women and providing added value for peer supporters, prison, health-care and BC staff. Key enablers and strategies for the care of perinatal women and the delivery of perinatal support are also detailed.

Through longitudinal data and the involvement of a range of stakeholders, this study evidences the subtleties of support provided by BC and the potential it has to make a difference to perinatal women in prison and those volunteering or working within the prison system.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how innovation in children’s services is adopted and developed by staff within new multi-disciplinary children’s safeguarding teams. It draws on diffusion of innovations (DOI) theory to help us better understand the mechanisms by which the successful implementation of multi-disciplinary working can be best achieved.

It is based on interviews with 61 frontline safeguarding staff, including social workers, substance misuse workers, mental health workers and domestic abuse workers. Thematic analysis identified the enablers and barriers to implementation.

DOI defines five innovation attributes as essential for rapid diffusion: relative advantage over current practice; compatibility with existing values and practices; complexity or simplicity of implementation; trialability or piloting of new ideas; and observability or seeing results swiftly. Staff identified multi-disciplinary team working and group supervision as advantageous, in line with social work values and improved their service to children and families. Motivational interviewing and new ways of case recordings were less readily accepted because of the complexity of practicing confidently and concerns about the risks of moving away from exhaustive case recording which workers felt provided professional accountability.

DOI is a useful reflective tool for senior managers to plan and review change programmes, and to identify any emerging barriers to successful implementation.

The paper provides insights into what children’s services staff value about multi-disciplinary working and why some aspects of innovation are adopted more readily than others, depending on the perception of diffusion attributes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which a systematic review approach is transferable from medicine to multi-disciplinary studies in the built environment research.

Primarily a review paper, it focuses on specific steps in the systematic review to clarify and elaborate the elements for adapting an evidence base in the built environment studies particular to the impact of green building on employees’ health, well-being and productivity.

While research represents a potentially powerful means of reducing the gap between research and practice by applying tried and tested methods, the methodological rigour is debatable when a traditional systematic review approach is applied in the built environment studies involving multi-disciplinary research.

The foundational contribution of this paper lies in providing methodological guidance and an alternative framework to advance the longstanding efforts in the built environment to bridge the practitioner and academic divide.

A systematic review approach in the built environment is rare. The method is unique in multi-disciplinary studies especially in green building studies. This paper adopts the systematic review protocols in this cross-disciplinary study involving health, management and built environment expertise.

In this paper, we draw on ethnographic research which tracked older people's journeys through the health and social care system, highlighting some of the key issues which will need to be addressed if the new single assessment process is to become user‐ and carer‐friendly. We argue that the concept of the ‘whole system’ is a misnomer, and a more accurate picture is that of a world at war, with territorial disputes rife and border controls tighter than ever. We suggest that too much emphasis has been placed on IT systems and paperwork and that the real challenge is to cut through the jargon of modernisation and to see things from a wholly different perspective.

Maintaining user-focused integrated team working in complex care is one of the demands made of UK health and social care (H&SC) organisations who need employees that are resilient, resilience being the ability to persevere and thrive in the face of exposure to adverse situations (Rogerson and Ermes, 2008, p. 1). Grant and Kinman (2012) write that resilience is a complex and multi-dimensional construct that is underexplored in social care team work. The purpose of this paper is to capture the views of managers in H&SC to explore the making of resilient teams, identify factors that influence team performance and inform organisational workforce development strategy.

A general inductive approach (Silverman, 2011) was applied. Five focus groups were facilitated (n=40) each with eight participants all of whom were leaders and managers of teams in H&SC, working in the integrated care context in the UK.

Findings indicate that further investment in strategies and resources to sustain and educate employees who work in teams and further research into how organisational systems can facilitate this learning positively may contribute to resilient teams and performance improvement. The authors note specifically that H&SC organisations make a distinction between the two most prevalent team types and structures of multi-disciplinary and inter-professional and plan more targeted workforce development for individual and team learning for resiliency within these team structures. In doing so organisations may gain further advantages such as improved team performance in problematic care situations.

Data captured are self-reported perceptions of H&SC managers. Participant responses in the focus group situation may have been those expected rather than those actually modelled in the realities of team work practice (Tanggaard, 2008). Further, in the sample all participants were engaged in a higher education programme and it is possible participants may have been more engaged with their practice and thinking more critically about the research questions than those not currently undertaking postgraduate study (Ng et al., 2014). Nor were the researchers able to observe the participants in team work practice over time or during critical care delivery incidents.

The preliminary link made here between multi-disciplinary and inter-professional team type, and their different stress points and subsequent workforce intervention, contributes to the theory of resilient teams. This provides organisations with a foundation for the focus of workplace learning and training around resilience. H&SC practitioner views presented offer a greater understanding of team work processes, together with a target for planning workforce development strategy to sustain resilience in team working.

This preliminary research found that participants in H&SC valued the team as a very important vehicle for building and sustaining resilience when dealing with complex H&SC situations. The capitalisation on the distinction in team type and individual working practices between those of interprofessional and multidisciplinary teams and the model of team learning, may have important consequences for building resilience in H&SC teams. These findings may be significant for workforce educators seeking to develop and build effective practice tools to sustain team working.

Prior to the sudden collapse of large companies following the turn of the century and the implication that the auditing of these enterprises had failed, the large public accounting firms sought to re‐engineer the audit. A comprehension attempt to convert that which had been designed as a social good into one more aligned with a commercial logic was halted by the legislative response to this departure from classic professionalism. Recent developments suggest that change in this direction is regrouping. The purpose of this paper is to provide a reflective analysis of the thoughts of the authors on the early development of the new audit approach.

Most of the information in the piece was garnered from conversations with public accounting partners during the era in question. Logical argumentation derived from the academic and theoretical literature is the primary method.

Attributes of the firms' strategies during this period are outlined. Features of the new audit are developed, especially as they vary from the traditional audit. These techniques and approaches are analyzed in terms of their ability to serve the public interest. This paper argues that motivating factors of the new audit will continue to be a force even in the more hostile regulatory environment of today.

An appreciation of the findings of the study is useful in maintaining a level of skepticism about changes to the audit that are advocated by audit firms. Users of audit services, regulators, and legislators would benefit from an appreciation of the recent past. The motivating factors underlying these changes to audit environment continue to operate over time as the social purposes of the audit are less likely to be converted by the firms to ones that can be commercially exploited.

The study contributes insights into the origins of the new business audit approach and related strengths and limitations. These factors should be considered as the approach is developed and moves forward into the future in order for the audit approach to be effective in performing its social functions.

This paper aims to present evidence for regarding reflexive practice as the crux of patient safety in tertiary hospitals. Reflexive practice buttresses safety because it is the precondition for flexible systematization – that is, the process that involves frontline clinicians in designing, redesigning and flexibly enacting care processes.

The paper presents an account of a collaborative video‐ethnographic project with a multi‐disciplinary team in an acute spinal unit. Video‐ethnography was combined with video‐reflexivity to provide practitioners with the opportunity to become involved in data interpretation and solution generation.

The study reveals that an outsider analysts/catalyst (or clinalyst) is critical to engaging frontline practitioners in reflexivity. The clinalyst is able to elicit insights and perspectives that assist practitioners in revisiting and revising their processes and practices, principally because video‐based reflexivity connects “what we do” directly to “who we are”.

Because complexity will be an indelible part of health care work, health care organizations should invest in developing “reflexive space” where learning about complexity becomes possible. Instead of continuing to invest in research efforts seeking to derive and test staff compliance with guidelines and protocols, and training centred on simulation, these organization must begin to engage with the lived complexity of clinical work in order to skill up incoming clinicians.

Enhancing clinical practitioners' capability to confront complexity in their practices is currently not a standard component of clinical training or work‐based learning. Video‐reflexive ethnography in tertiary health care is unique in involving clinicians in “making sense” of and deriving solutions from lived complexity.