NOVA Rapport 18/11

children and youth. Participating in the project are the health services, the
educational- psychological services, Child Welfare Services and the
coordinator for interdisciplinary collaboration for children and youth. During
the project period this municipality also collaborated with Oslo University
College on teaching 80 employees about interdisciplinary interaction.
Bærum participated with a model that consisted of collaboration
between the Child Welfare Services and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
They have focused on developing their joint expertise and intensifying the
collaboration between ten employees in each of the two services. They intend
to transfer their good experiences to other collaborative constellations. While
they were developing their competences, they also worked together on cases
that involved other agencies. Network meetings and kickoffs were essential to
getting the interaction started.
The aim of the evaluation has been to evaluate and describe changes in
the interdisciplinary and interdepartmental collaboration during the project
period. Only 14-18 months passed between the first and second collection of
data, which limits the likelihood of there having been any major changes in
the municipalities. Organizations take time to change, and a year and a half
is a short time in this respect. Municipalities usually also have several projects
going on at the same time, which makes it difficult to know what is caused
by which process.
In our evaluation we have looked at criteria that characterize good types
of cooperation. Amongst these are; regular meetings, clear allocation of
responsibility, formalized routines, management follow-up and the correct
skills and knowledge. Other characteristics of collaborative competence are
knowledge about each others routines, work practices, duty of confidentiality
and informing. The intent has been to understand which processes the
employees have participated in and their experiences.
We collected data for the evaluation twice. The first round was in the
fall of 2009 in four of the municipalities and in January 2010 in the last two
municipalities. The first round consisted of individual interviews and focus
groups with the employees, and also gathering information from statistics
and documents.
– Sammen for barn og unge – bedre samordning av tjenester til utsatte barn og unge – 115