The purpose of this exercise is to critically consider collaborative relationships with professionals around the school and, where necessary or possible, to raise this collaboration to a higher professional level
How does the collaborative relationship with Youth Aid or Mental Health characterize itself? 1.Cooperative? 2.Coordination? 3.Collaboration? (Information about these three levels in summary)
Exchange: what could you do, to possibly grow from 1 to 2, from 1 to 3 or from 2 to 3?
Explanation Three levels of Interprofessional Collaboration
Inclusive education requires cooperation. Not only with professionals from within your own school, but also with professionals from outside your own organization. Gerdes and de Bruïne (2018) point out that cooperation between education, health and youth services will not always naturally level off. Ways of working, tasks, roles and functions, separate money flows, management, attitudes and vision can get in the way of working together constructively. Gerdes describes three levels of cooperation.
Cooperative involves a loose cooperative relationship and the exchange of information. Contact is formal and low intensity. People stay out of each other's way and hardly learn from and with each other.
Coordination involves structural, multidisciplinary cooperation. The exchange of information is coordinated and there is a sustainable connection between school, youth aid and parents. Support processes fit together, people are aware of each other's goals and plans. At this level of cooperation, more is learned from each other, and people occasionally enter each other's professional domain, thinking along with each other.
At the level of cooperation, we call collaboration, there are strong cooperative relationships, where working methods and knowledge are linked back and forth. There is expansive learning from and with each other. Approaches are designed and implemented integrally, and people work together in a interprofessional way. Goals are set together and people jointly look for possible solutions to complex problems. Care, development and wellbeing of the learner are paramount (Gerdes & De Bruïne, 2018).