** Shortlisted for the NASEN Special Educational Needs Academic Book Award 2009 ** Inter-professional collaborations are invaluable relationships which can prevent the social exclusion of children and young people and are now a common feature of welfare policies worldwide. Drawing on a four year study of the skills and understanding required of practitioners in order to establish the most effective interagency collaborations, this comprehensive text * * Gives examples from practitioners developing inter-professional practices allow readers to reflect on their relevance for their own work * * Emphasises what needs to be learnt for responsive inter-professional work and how that learning can be promoted * * Examines how professional and organisational learning are intertwined * * Suggests how organisations can provide conditions to support the enhanced forms of professional practices revealed in the study * * Reveals the professional motives driving the practices as well as how they are
