Facilitating Interagency Collaboration – Creating a Space for Learning in a ‘Wicked’ World.

Childrens Services Committees (CSC) in Ireland are structures to bring together all agencies involved in childrens services in a region. Their aim is to achieve better co-ordination in service delivery. This paper describes an ongoing programme developed by the authors to facilitate individuals within six working groups within one CSC to examine the effectiveness of their interagency collaboration. The programme entails engagement of participants in two workshops as well as the creation of a space for action learning within monthly working group meetings. Within this space, group members reflect on their collaborative processes and decide on actions to address identified issues. This paper will position the work of the CSC in the context of two literatures, firstly, that on ‘wicked’ issues and inter-agency working, and secondly, the deployment of action learning to foster collaborative inter-agency working relationships. It will describe the particular action learning programme developed by the authors, and discuss how we are also constituting this as a research study, before presenting reflections on the outcomes of the programme.