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Following the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), there has been considerable growth in research with children about health and services that affect them. Creative methods to engage with children have also been developed.One area where progress has been slower is the inclusion of children's perspectives in qualitative research in the context of clinical trials or feasibility studies. Addressing this gap, this article discusses experiences of, and reflections on, the process of researching children's views as part of a clinical feasibility study. The article considers what worked well and highlights remaining dilemmas. A new continuum of children's engagement in research is presented, designed to assist researchers to make explicit the contingent demands on their research, and to suggest a range of techniques from within the broader fields of health, childhood studies and education research that could be used to forward qualitative research in clinical contexts.

The Personal Medical Services (PMS) pilot sites, launched in England in 1997 by the Secretary of State for the then Conservative government, introduced a local contract for primary care, aimed at promoting flexibility, innovation and policy participation. As part of the National Evaluation of PMS, this paper considers the professional and organisational relationships established between service providers working in those PMS sites which specifically set out to address inequalities in access to primary care for vulnerable populations. The introduction of PMS enabled a change of cultural values in primary care, particularly regarding GPs' relationships with nurses and practice staff. However, PMS has not necessarily led to equal partnerships within primary care teams. Rather,in the selected sites evaluated new interprofessional relationships emerged. There was evidence of intra and interprofessional partnerships being forged, providing the basis for further improved intersectoral collaboration. There was also evidence that the GP based medical model made way for a community oriented/public health model with emphasis on health maintenance for the vulnerable.

The contemporary relationship between theory and practice in interprofessional learning and development is explored in the context of the United Kingdom (UK) government's multiple reform policies for 'modernizing' health and social care. As part of a 1-year action research programme, four local case studies in London are described. These illustrate the new collaborations being created and point to the importance of understanding, as a priority for future research and organizational developments in primary care, the changing and complex roles of non-statutory stakeholder agencies and process facilitation. Both are emerging as critical factors for effective policy implementation. Overall, the London-wide programme indicates the dysfunctional nature of excessively linear conceptual models, and the need, in practice, to espouse eclectic and dynamic approaches to theories for learning in health and social care.

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