The symposium is composed at a time when the international trend to integrate the provision of services for children and young people is changing in many contexts. The international economic crisis has brought about a re-evaluation of the purposes of education in nation states throughout the world.  The  integration of  services for young people in education, social work, health and the criminal justice system and its attendant requirement for inter-agency working and the development of trans-professional knowledge offers challenges for those researching working and teaching young people and the professionals who work with them across Europe. One of these challenges has been that policy and practice varies greatly between contexts.

There is now a good deal of research on integrated working or services linkages. As a result of this, in all or national contexts we have a perspective on policy and practice in this changing field. It is a complex amalgam of vocational commitments that are practical, cognitive and affective, requiring new forms and practices of accountability. All of these aspects of policy and professional development challenged and nuanced in each national and professional context. From the body of work in the field we now understand a good deal about professional and inter-professional activity, as well as associated policy and practice disjunctions and dilemmas. But what happens to ‘integrated practices’, ‘generic working’, ‘client-centred’ values, and ‘accountability’ itself in each national context? What is the impact on the professional training, development, practice and morale of professionals within the practitioner and policy making communities related to children and young people? Under such pressures, what happens to ‘joined-up’ professional work transcending traditional boundaries in relation to traditional job description, professional remit and values. It is already known that it involves new learning in relation to collaborative work, cross-disciplinary practice and client definition. The session draws together reviews of papers from the UK, Netherlands and Canada to explore some of these issues.

The symposium will commence with a very short historical overview of trends in policy, presented by the session Chair, Rob Hulme (University of Chester United Kingdom). This is followed by three: (1)Twyla Salm ( University of Regina , Canada) will explore the Canadian context; (2) Rob Hulme (University of Chester, UK) will interrogate the changing policy agenda in the UK and the impact of the economic crisis on integrated working.; (3)Dolf Van Veen (NCEYE Netherlands and University of Nottingham UK)  , presents on the development of new approaches and  practices at the National Centre on Education and Youth Care in the Netherlands.

It is remarkable that in a relatively short time and in quite different geographical locations different ways of thinking about integrated working in policy and practices have emerged. There are differing answers to the questions above in each of our contexts. Whilst this symposium cannot begin to answer all of these, it does draw on the work of a group of academics who have explored aspects of this diverse agenda for years.