For those staff working collaboratively it is important that they are clear about the type of shared working model they are involved with, as different terms can mean different things. In the last few decades we have been introduced to inter-agency and multi-agency working, networking, partnership working, and more recently joint commissioning. All of these terms suggest that sharing and collaboration is a positive thing but it can be unhelpful if the terms are used inter-changeably.
As the latest term in collaboration, shared services is reminiscent of these earlier terms that predicted positive outcomes, but did not always deliver the value that was promised. The studies highlighted here provide much that can be welcomed, including financial savings, good working relationships and trust between partners. However, they also identify the continuing themes that undermine collaborative work, including an organisation’s motivation to collaborate, the domination of one partner over another, and the challenges of evaluating and evidencing the benefits of shared services.
Currently, the academic research base on shared services is undeveloped, with few good-quality studies available. Within this research – as these case studies illustrate – the current examples are business or system focused with no substantial reference to children and families services.
An important question to ask is, “what is the difference between shared services and joint commissioning for the delivery of children and family services?” A service jointly commissioned to meet a health and social care need may be required to deliver a care need that is more complex than one that can be met by a single agency (e.g. the NHS and local authority). This is particularly important where there are legislative barriers that a joint commissioning approach can overcome.
But shared services in the spirit of how they are currently intended – typically back-office services of procurement, human resources and IT – only contribute one element to a wider and complicated children and families service system. The current use of shared services seems to be much more about organisational and financial rationalisation, than the professional assessment of need. In a shared service model, less attention is perhaps given to the complex ethical or moral issues associated with state intervention in the lives of service users.
In future, it will be interesting to observe if and how a shared service model is used in frontline children and young people’s services. Because of continued concerns about poor multi-agency communication and joint working in children’s safeguarding, shared services may choose to focus on areas that are of lower risk or only include planned services, as seen in the examples here.
