Impact of the Multi-professional Approach - Literature review Example

Impact of the Multi-professional Approach By + Dame Tickell did an assessment on the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) following a request from the Children’s Minister (The Tickell Review, 2012). The review emphasizes on the value of play (Mawson, 2010), language, and communication as key in the leaning and development process of children (Palaiologou, 2013). It suggests a multi-professional approach as a viable approach to ensure completeness in the EYFS. This approach has its own merits in terms of overall child development and at the same time suffers some setbacks that may negatively influence the EYFS. Positives and their impact A multi-professional approach brings together various services and makes them close to the children. This enhances the accessibility of different professional services by the children and improves children’s’ development (Tickell, 2011). The readily available advise, commitment, and support for the children helps them to enjoy the requisite services for their normal growth and development. The approach exposes the children to a variety of professionals for mentorship (Hungerland, 2007). The teachers also benefit from this multi-professional approach (Basford and Hodson, 2008). This approach enables the teachers to understand the roles and activities of other professionals in the development of the children, and therefore sheds of some of the burdens that teachers experience in light of child development (Jones, Holmes and Powell, 2005). The teacher thus allows other professionals to perform their roles while he/she puts more energy and focus on teaching. By focusing on their teaching roles, teachers are able to deliver their best, leading to improvements in the learning process for the children (Reed and Canning, 2010). It also provides student-teacher time, which is essential for learning and facilitates the development of the mind (Call and Featherstone, 2010). This personal time is very valuable for the nurturing of leadership skills among children (Clark and Murray, 2012). This approach helps in breaking professional barriers and enhances a sense of professional harmony in promoting positive child development. Overlaps sometimes exist between the roles of different professions, and there may be need for consultations and interdependency for desirable outcomes (Trodd and Chivers, 2011). Working together in joint projects and pooling resources by different professions improves the scale of coverage for children’s services and enhances the sustainability of children’s programs (Beckley, Elvidge and Hendry, 2009). Joint operations also help minimize the duplication of efforts and thus enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of service provision to children. This approach also considers bringing parents on board and enhancing their relationship with professionals (Overall Reforms to the 2012 EYFS Framework, 2014). There is a sense of mutual support and sharing of ideas in the multi-professional approach. The professionals are able to encourage each other, exchange opinions and share resources and knowledge. This helps the professionals reduce their workloads to manageable levels and focus on safeguarding children’s rights (Review of the Early Years Professional Status Standards, 2012). In the multi-professional approach, children benefit from the good working relationship between various professionals through timely referrals and service provision since there is a sense of coordination of activities and purpose (Easton and Gee, 2012). O3ing to the fact that all the professions are working towards desirable outcomes in child development, they are able to set joint targets and work towards achieving those targets (Walker, 2008). Through the multi-professional approach, there is better advocacy on issues affecting children. A call for action by several professions is much more effective than a call for action by one profession. This collective influence leads to the development of policies and legislations that are in favor of the welfare of the children (Knowles, 2009). These legislations and policies will go a long way in improving the lives of children and developing interest among other professionals to join hands for this noble cause (Garrick et al., 2010). The other benefit of group influence is that it has an upper hand in the sourcing and mobilization of resources for comprehensive programs targeting children. The approach enables joint planning for current and future comprehensive projects ascribed to children (Siraj-Blatchford and Manni, 2006). This is a result of the reality that the problems that one profession faces in addressing child-related issues are common to other professions and therefore there is need to work together to handle the issues (Nurse, 2007). This motivates professionals to work together and develop comprehensive programs for positive outcomes on child development. Negatives and their impact Funding concerns are common in multi-agency projects. These programs are mainly concerned with sustainability and sources for funding for multi-agency projects, which usually results in conflicts between professions (Multi-agency collaboration and service provision in the early years, 2014). It is difficult to find multi-agency funding sources for training and service provision. This bottleneck usually has a negative influence on the willingness and ability of different professions to work together for the fear of failure. The professionals need to prevent children from experiencing such fears and failures (Hughes and Owen, 2009). Time is another challenge attached to the multi-professional approach. Since time is limited, some professions may not be in a position to offer their services effectively since those services require long waiting periods, for example, mental health services (Martin, Volkmar and Lewis, 2007). Learning also needs time (Glazzard, 2010). These services may interrupt the flow of other services, and if the other professions fail to understand this, conflicts may arise or suboptimal service provision may result (Wall, 2004). There is also danger attributed to role ambiguity, overlap, and conflict in multi-professional projects. These tenets may lead to time wastage on the duplication of roles while failing to address other key issues affecting child development (Brooker et al., 2010). Competing priorities may arise and place high expectations on other professions to deliver positive outcomes (Strickland and Riley-Ayers, 2007). These high expectations may burden other professions and bring a sense of over-reliance on others to achieve their goals. The differences in working conditions, disparities in status and culture associated with some professionals may act as a barrier to collective action for proper child development (The Benefits and Challenges of Collaborative Multi-Agency Working, 2014). These discrepancies may negatively influence the success of joint health projects due to coordination challenges and discomfort attached to different working conditions or settings. The difference in the language between professionals may also be a barrier in terms sharing information and working together. This language barrier may require the simplification and clarification of jargons and specific conditions, which consumes a great deal of time at the expense of service delivery. Some professions may be reluctant to share knowledge and resources for joint projects. These territorial boundaries between professions may be difficult to overcome and may frustrate the multi-professional approach of handling child issues (New and Cochran, 2007). In other situations, the scenario is worse due to the resultant jealousy between and among professions, which creates a sense of mistrust. Some professions may want to prove superiority in handling certain issues and therefore fail to make referrals in their bid to create the impression that they effectively handle such situations. This sense of superiority compromises on the quality of service offered, causing detrimental effects on children. Conclusion A multi-professional approach in addressing issues associated with children provides a more comprehensive package of benefits when compared to the reliance on parent roles in isolation (Wheeler, Connor and Goodwin, 2009). The benefits attached to the multi-professional need to be enhanced and the challenges in implementing the approach require innovative solutions in mitigating them. References Basford, J. and Hodson, E. (2008). Teaching early years foundation stage. 1st ed. Exeter: Learning Matters. Beckley, P., Elvidge, K. and Hendry, H. (2009). Implementing the early years foundation stage. 1st ed. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill International (UK) Ltd. Brooker, L., Rogers, S., Ellis, D., Hallet, E. and Roberts-Holmes, G. (2010). Practitioners experiences of the Early Years Foundation Stage. Department for Education (DFE). Call, N. and Featherstone, S. (2010). The thinking child. 1st ed. London: Continuum. Clark, R. and Murray, J. 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