FACT SHEET
RESEARCH IN PROGRESS
Examining collaborative practices and integrated service provision in early
years services
Description
Professor Jennifer Sumsion, Dr Frances Press and Dr
Sandie Wong (with Associate Professor Louise Hard)
have been working on a program of funded research
projects since 2010 exploring collaborative practices and
integrated service provision in early years services.
Collaborative practice and the provision of integrated
early years services has received a great deal of policy
attention in Australia in the last five years or so.
Collaboration between diverse professionals working with
children in the early years and their families, and the
provision of integrated early years services that offer a
range of programs for children and families i, are
considered by governments, policy experts and
advocates from early childhood, health and welfare alike,
to have great potential for effectively supporting children
and their families—particularly those living in challenging
circumstances.
Objectives
The aim of each of the following projects that make up
this program of research is to explore and support interprofessional collaborative practices and/or integrated
early years service provision:
• Integrated early years provision in Australia. Funded
by the Professional Support Coordinators Alliance.
[Completed 2010]
• Collaborative practice research project. Funded by
the Victorian Department of Education and Early
Child Development. [Completed 2012]
• Exploring The Infants’ Home’s journey towards
integrated early childhood service provision. Funded
by The Infants’ Home. [Completed 2012]
• Leading into inter-professional practice. A selffunded project with SDN Children’s Services. [In
progress]
• Preparation of a resource to support leaders in
Australian early childhood integrated services. [In
progress]
Methods
The projects primarily use case study methodology,
drawing on data from observations, interviews, and focus
groups gathered by a team of experts from the early
childhood field, including CSU adjuncts; as well as large
scale surveys.
www.csu.edu.au/reserach/ripple
The projects were conducted in services located in a
range of rural, regional and metropolitan areas across
Australia.
Findings
Findings from the initial projects have highlighted a
number of external, organisational and personal factors
likely to contribute to effective collaborative work and
integrated service provision consistent with the literature.
At the government and professional-education level,
these factors include having clear and consistent policies
(Nichols & Jurvansuu, 2008), and a coordinated approach
to professional training that prepares professionals for
working in inter-professional teams (Atwool, 2003). At an
organisational level, important factors include a shared
philosophy and clear vision of what it means to practice in
an ‘inter-professional’ way, strong leadership and
structures that support communication and shared
understandings within and between organisations, and a
commitment to adequate amounts of non-service delivery
time for team relationship-building (Atwool, 2003;
Drennan, Wagner & Rosenbaum, 2005; Siraj-Blatchford
& Siraj-Blatchford, 2009; Whalley, 2006). At a personal
level, it is important that team members have a clear
understanding of their own and others’ professional
expertise, the ability to clearly articulate that knowledge
(Edwards, 2009), the capacity to be reflective and
reflexive (Atwool, 2003), and a willingness to build and
maintain relationships within the team (Pilkington &
Malinowski, 2002).
These findings have been published in the following:
Reports
Press, F., Sumsion, J., & Wong, S. (2010). Integrated
early years provision in Australia: A research project
for the Professional Support Coordinators Alliance.
Ashfield, NSW: Professional Support Coordinators
Alliance. (97 pages)
Wong, S., & Press, F. (2012). The art of integration.
Sydney: The Infants' Home Ashfield. (36 pages)
Wong, S., Press, F., Sumsion, J., & Hard, L. (2012).
Collaborative practice in Victorian early years
services: 10 project sites. Melbourne: Department of
Education and Early Childhood Development. (42
pages)
Scholarly journal articles and book chapters
Press, F. (in press). Embedding collaboration in
integrated early childhood services: The strategic role
of governance and leadership. Waikato Journal of
Education—Te Hautaka Mātauranga o Waikato.
Press, F., Wong, S., & Sumsion, J. (2012). Child-centred,
family-centred, decentred: Positioning children as
rights-holders in early childhood program
collaborations. Global Studies of Childhood, 2(1), 26–
37.
Sumsion, J., Press, F., & Wong, S. (2012). Theorizing
integrated service provision in Australia: Policies,
philosophies, practices. In J. Duncan & S. Te One
(Eds.), Comparative early childhood education
services: International perspectives (pp. 33-55). New
York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Wong, S., Sumsion, J., & Press, F. (2012). Early
childhood professionals and inter-professional work in
integrated early childhood services in Australia.
Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 37(1), 81-88.
Invited presentations and conference papers
Press, F. (2011, March). Listening, leading learning:
Governance and leadership in integrated services.
Presented at the Centre for Community Child Health
(CCCH), Victorian Integrated Services Practitioners
Network, Melbourne.
Press, F. (2011, July). Listening, leading learning:
Integrated services in Australia. Presented to the
‘Working collectively with families’, Teacher Refresher
Conference, Waikato, New Zealand.
Press, F. (2011, July). More than co-existence.
Commitment, complexity and cohesion in early years’
integration. Presented to the National Investment in
the Early Years (NIFTeY) conference, Sydney.
Press, F., & Wong, S. (2011, June 3-4). Researching
partnerships between professionals and families.
Paper presented at the Early Childhood Australia
conference ‘Together we grow: Achieving sustainable
practices’, Melbourne.
Sumsion, J., & Wong, S. (2012, May 21). Reflections on
the research and policy literature about integrated
services: Gaps and future directions. Invited paper
presented at the AARE Early Childhood SIG
Symposium on Integrated Services, Melbourne.
Wong, S., Press, F., & Sumsion, J. (2012, September 46). Positioning children as right’s holders within interprofessional teams: The role of early childhood
education professionals. Paper to be presented at the
British Educational Research Association Conference,
Manchester, England.
Wong, S., & Turner, K. (2012, May 9-11). Leading into
inter-professional practice: A collaborative enquiry into
leadership during the establishment of an
interdisciplinary autism specific early childhood
education service. Paper presented at the ProPEL
International Conference ‘Professions and
professional learning in troubling times: Emerging
practices and transgressive knowledges’, University of
Stirling, Stirling, Scotland.
www.csu.edu.au/reserach/ripple
References
Atwool, N. (2003). If it’s such a good idea, how come it
doesn’t work: The theory and practice of integrated
service delivery. Childrenz Issues, 7(2), 31–35.
Drennan, A., Wagner, T., & Rosenbaum, P. (2005).
Keeping current in…The ‘key worker’ model of service
delivery. Retrieved from
http://www.canchild.ca/Default.aspx?tabid=130
Edwards, A. (2009). Relational agency in collaborations
for the well-being of children and young people.
Journal of Children’s Services, 4(1), 33–44.
Nichols, S., & Jurvansuu, S. (2008). Partnership in
integrated early childhood services: An analysis of
policy framings in education and human services.
Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 9(1), 117–
130.
Pilkington, K. O., & Malinowski, M. (2002). The natural
environment II: Uncovering deeper responsibilities
within relationship-based services. Infants and Young
Children, 15(2), 78–84.
Siraj-Blatchford, I., & Siraj-Blatchford, J. (2009).
Improving development outcomes for children through
effective practice in integrating early years services.
London: Centre for Excellence and Outcomes in
Young People’s Services.
Whalley, M. (2006). Leadership in integrated centres and
services for children and families. A community
development approach: engaging with the struggle.
Childrenz Issues, 10(2), 8–13.
Contact
Dr Sandie Wong
School of Teacher Education
Charles Sturt University
Panorama Avenue
Bathurst NSW 2795
Australia
Tel: +61 2 6338 4437
Email: [email protected]
www.csu.edu.au/research/ripple
i
Integrated child and family services can operate on a
number of different models. For instance, they may be colocated, as in ‘one-stop-shops’, or virtually integrated as in
the case where services are located in different places—but
there are strong links between services, and child and family
access is actively facilitated. Integrated child and family
services can also be a hybrid, having some co-located
services and other virtual aspects. They may be managed by
one single auspicing body or be an amalgamation of several
different organisations. In Australia, Canada and the United
Kingdom integrated child and family services are often
provided or supported by governments and tend to be in
areas of disadvantage. In some cases they are located in or
near schools.