Learning Across Sites: New tools, infrastructures and practices - Earli

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Learning how to know who 19
The chapters in this collection are shifting our focus to the level of practice
by asking us to examine the competencies that arise when new tools are inserted
into systems. In this chapter I follow that theme by using the conceptual tools of
CHAT to look at (a) how an object of professional activity is expanded when new
conceptual tools are brought to bear on it and (b) the development of expansive
responses to these complex objects, which are made more challenging by the need
to work across organizational boundaries.
The discussion will centre on the introduction of ‘the prevention of social
exclusion’ as a new core concept in welfare and education services in England.
Its introduction has led to major reconfigurations of local children’s services and
an expectation that professionals from different backgrounds will collaborate to
disrupt children’s trajectories of social exclusion to enable them to take up the
opportunities for engaging with what society has to offer them. These collaborations
call for new professional competencies and particularly a capacity to know
how to contribute to and work with the expertise that is distributed across local
systems. In particular I focus on the Children’s Fund, which was a £980m national
initiative (2000–2008) set up as a catalyst for developing systems and practices
aimed at preventing social exclusion among 5- to 13- year- olds.
It was established with the expectation that new tools and new goals would
lead to new ways of working; and as with many such initiatives a great deal of
the learning that occurred was embedded within local sets of social practices and
was short- lived. In this chapter I suggest that more attention needs to be paid to
recognizing and sustaining ways of working with the new tools which reflect the
demands of newly interpreted objects, if we are to take forward the knowledge
that is embedded in emerging practices.
Working together to prevent the social exclusion
of vulnerable children
The 1990s in Europe witnessed a refocusing of work with children and young people
from disadvantaged backgrounds. These children came to be seen as vulnerable
to social exclusion and likely to fail to engage with and contribute to society. Of
course vulnerability is complex and may not be evident unless one looks across all
aspects of a child’s life: parenting, schooling, housing and so on. It was therefore
immediately apparent that the welfare services which work with children needed
to find ways of enabling collaboration between practitioners (Home Office, 2000;
OECD, 1998).
As concerns with both youth disaffection and national economic competitiveness
have grown, the prevention of social exclusion through early intervention and multiprofessional
working has become increasingly important and has been enshrined in
a swathe of programmes which intervene in the early stages of vulnerability, which
are not necessarily in the early years of life, by building protective factors such as
sustained support around children. These factors are intended to disrupt emerging
trajectories which look likely to lead to school failure and unemployment.