NOVA Rapport 18/11

The second round was the winter / spring of 2011. In February/ March
we sent an electronic questionnaire with questions about how the employees
in the involved services, in all six municipalities, experienced the
interdisciplinary and interdepartmental collaboration. In the spring of 2011
we did a new round of individual and group interviews.
After the first round of data collection NOVA wrote a status report
about how the collaboration was perceived in the municipalities. Some of the
municipalities used that Paper as a basis for the continuation of their efforts
and development of their models.
The first stage of the study showed that there was a lot of variation
between the municipalities regarding how far they had developed their
models for cooperation. There were some common experiences that can be
summed up as follows:
• The participating services overall had high level of expertise.
• It was challenging to get the professionals working in “the field”
committed to collaboration.
• All the municipalities experienced that there wasn’t enough time for
extensive collaboration.
• Collaboration wasn’t always useful.
• Many had established routines for regular meetings, but the challenge was
to make them meaningful, constructive to improving the services to the
clients. Several were discontent with the results of the meetings.
• In general improvement of cooperational skills was required.
• There was discontentment with how the duty of confidentiality was
handled.
• There was a lack of knowledge about and understanding of the partner’s
services, responsibilities and roles.
• There was a need for more knowledge about one’s own organization and
possible offers in the municipality.
• There were few who knew about the project “Sammen for barn og unge” at
the time of the first round of data collection.
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NOVA Rapport 18/11