Multi-agency, multi-professional work: experiences from a drug prevention project

Policy documents at local, national and international level continue to call for greater multi-agency and multi-professional working. These calls are based on three arguments: (1) health and illness are created and influenced by multiple factors outside of health service policy, (2) health improvement requires collaboration between statutory, voluntary and private sector organizations, and (3) efficiency and effectiveness are aided when duplication of effect is avoided and service transition is as seamless as possible. However, there remains limited process-orientated research that has explored the difficulties and challenges faced during multi-agency and multi-professional work. This study employed qualitative methods (interviews, participant observation and documentary analysis) to understand the social construction of a multi-agency and multi-professional health promotion project orientated toward the prevention of drug-related harm. The findings illustrate the ways in which the processes involved in securing funding led to multiple and competing project aims, how changes in personnel and the internal (re)organization of agencies created disjunctions in project membership and shared understandings of key priorities, and how the social need to keep group members 'onside' and committed, competed with the imperatives of prioritization and addressing issues surrounding differentials in power between members and between agencies.