Når børn mistrives: Hvilke coping-mekanismer er på spil i samarbejder på tværs?

Resumé

Working with children who are not thriving often requires collaboration across professional and organizational boundaries. In this paper, we focus on individual street-level bureaucrats’ (shortened SLB) coping mechanisms employed in collaboration with other professionals either internally in the same organization (school or daycare) or outside the organization (e.g. between schoolteachers and family therapists or psychologists). We argue that the service delivery of today is not only dependent on the individual SLBs but also heavily dependent on the division of labor between different actors. In our case, the support of a child depends a lot on how teachers collaborate with other professionals in other organizations. Coping mechanisms have mainly been studied as behavioral efforts employed by SLBs in client relations. This article expands the existing knowledge by applying a SLB perspective and focusing on individual coping strategies in collaborative work. A research project was conducted in seven Danish municipalities including 35 interviews conducted with six different professions, who is involved in either everyday care of children in daycare or schools or are experts called upon. We identify three families of coping mechanisms at play in the collaborative work: 1) Passing the buck, 2) Preparing and anticipating, and 3) Omissions.