Sustainable Collaboration to Support Vulnerable Youth: Mental Health Support Teams in Upper Secondary School

Abstract

Schools play a central role in preventing mental health problems from affecting the development and educational opportunities of youth. While school health and social pedagogical support services have expanded in many countries, they are still not considered sufficient in meeting the needs of vulnerable youth. We find particular challenges in the development of sustainable collaboration to support the target group. In this article, we present and analyze empirical data from ongoing trailing research on an interprofessional team focusing on the health and psychosocial conditions of students in various upper secondary schools in Norway. In the article, we discuss what conditions need to be in place for inter-professional collaboration to succeed in the efforts to support students at risk of dropping out of upper secondary school. The article is theoretically influenced by boundary literature and analyzes challenges and opportunities in boundary crossing between different professions and service areas. In the article, we argue for the need to spend time on establishing a reflecting understanding of which qualities the various actors possess and what they should contribute with to create a collaboration that constitutes more than the coordination of what already exists, thereby creating intersecting practices; so-called third spaces.

Developing Long-Term Sustainable Collaborations between Welfare Providers That Support and Promote Child and Youth Mental Health in Sweden—A Qualitative Interview Study

“…These findings can be understood from a time perspective, where time has been found to be an important factor for achieving good interprofessional collaboration [1,10]. In Sweden, there are parallel lines present concerning a time perspective at the national policy level.…”

“…The concept 'collaborative inertia' [9] has emerged to describe the fact that collaborative arrangements often appear to have a negligible or extremely slow rate of output. Implementing collaboration has often been described as more difficult than anybody could have imagined [1]; good interprofessional collaboration is often experienced as demanding to achieve [10]. Some research even suggests that some problems are best solved by individual organizations working alone [11].…”

“…Some social problems, however, cannot be easily solved except by working across sector lines to develop shared understandings and a commitment to shared solutions [11,13]. Countering mental illness among children and young people has been identified as just one such problem [10,14]. For collaborations to work in contexts such as this, it is argued that they need to be multifaceted, dynamic, and functional across many different levels [13].…”

Listen to the children and young people: Nordic collaboration on improved services to vulnerable children and young people

“…To strengthen the collaborative culture, professionals cannot simply be brought together, they need to spend time together with the aim of establishing knowledge of each other's competence and contributions (Anvik and Waldahl, 2018). Regular, compulsory and structured interdisciplinary meetings are experienced as a valuable tool to create a bridge between professionals.…”

Emerging Multi-Professional Assemblages of Precision Guidance Producing the Resilient and Future-Oriented Citizen

“…Recent research on inter-professional collaboration has argued that collaborative and tailored approaches are effective in helping young people with complex and multiple needs (Anvik & Wahldahl, 2018;Helander et al, 2018;McCarter, Maschi, & Morgen, 2014). While focus has largely been on the professional, institutional and societal aspects of these arrangements, there is room for critical inquiries about the kinds of knowledge, interventions and youth subjectivities collaborative approaches support in tackling the problems and barriers young people face in their transitions.…”