The last two decades have seen a rapid growth of research interest in children’s public sector service policy and practice, providing insights into how vulnerable children and those with disabilities are being educated and brought up, and on the role that school and other children’s services working together play in maintaining the development and flourishing of children and young people requiring support. In the UK, considerable emphasis has been placed on co-professional working across managerial boundaries, particularly as the majority of children are educated in mainstream school services. A plurality of contacts amongst many professionals is required, and such contacts can be fleeting and solution-focussed. Young people also leave school to engage with different, equally complex, adult services, also requiring multiple and transitory professional interactions.

Using professionals concerned with pupils with speech, language and communication needs (SLCNs) as heuristic examples, the authors have theorised that such brief contacts risk limiting the development of the type of cross-professional social relationships that are required by integrated child service policies (e.g. SG 2012, HM Treasury 2003) by curtailing the development of social capital relations. We have argued that the relationships needed to bridge and link across professional boundaries may not thrive, whereas bonding social capital relationships will continue to flourish with close colleagues within professions and immediate work settings (cf. Forbes & McCartney 2011, 2015, and see presentations to ECER 2010, 2012, 2014).

Few empirical studies of professional views on working across services have been available, but the authors have recently completed two such studies. Study One, ‘Language for All’, concerned pupils with SLCNs in mainstream primary classes within one English educational authority (EA), and Study Two, ‘Moving across SLT Teams’, concerned school-leavers with learning disability transitioning from school- to adult-SLT services within one Scottish health board (HB). Evidence analysing social capital relationships extracted from interviews with teams of professionals in those studies is presented here.

Forbes, J. & McCartney, E. (2010) Social capital theory: a cross-cutting analytic for teacher/therapist work in integrating children’s services? Child Language, Teaching and Therapy, 26, 3, 321-334. Forbes, J. & McCartney, E. (2011) Educating Scotland’s Future Together? Inter/professional preparation for schools and children’s services. Scottish Educational Review, 43.2, 39-64. Forbes, J. & McCartney, E. (2015) Educating Children’s Practitioners: A (re)turn to the university disciplines. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 36.1, 144-159. HM Treasury (2003) Every Child Matters. London: HMSO. Scottish Government [SG] (2012) Getting it Right for Children and Families. A Guide to Getting it Right for Every Child. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.