What Lies Underneath? An Inter-organizational Analysis of Collaboration between Education and Social Work

Correspondence to Nadia Farmakopoulou, Neoxoriou 32, 162 31 Byronas, Athens, Greece. Summary This paper draws upon qualitative data from a study that examinesinter-professional and inter-agency collaboration in specialeducational needs assessments. It is shown that, despite theattempts of a number of government policies to intensify andenhance such interactions, collaborative activities in thisfield continue to be limited in extent and poor in quality.A number of possible explanations for these findings are exploredand analysed within an inter-organizational theoretical framework.Although effective and frequent inter-agency collaboration hasproven to be difficult, it is argued that this is not an unattainablegoal, and recommendations are offered in the last section.