Social pedagogy and inter-professional practice: evaluation of Orkney Islands training programme

From February to September 2011, a social pedagogy training programme was provided for 18 staff from across Orkney Islands Council education and social care services. The initiative was jointly funded by Orkney Islands Council and the Scottish Institute for Residential Child Care (SIRCC), now the Centre for excellence for looked after children in Scotland (CELCIS). The Orkney initiative was the first instance in Scotland of an inter-agency group of participants undertaking the course together. The purpose of the evaluation was to provide systematic evidence of the impact that the social pedagogy training had on participants’ day-to-day practice and inter-agency or inter-professional working. The evaluation questions were:
1.What was the impact of the training on participants’ day-to-day practice?
2.What impact did the provision of social pedagogy training to multi-agency participants have on their inter-professional and inter-agency collaboration?
3.What helped and hindered the process of building inter-agency collaboration and what key challenges can be identified?