Coherent Triads and Collaboration Identities in Swedish Youth Care

Previous collaboration research shows that problems and conflicts sometimes arise as a part of collaboration. Researchers have highlighted the importance of narratives, but have not focused on narratives about successful cooperation. This article tries to fill this gap by analyzing stories of successful cooperation, even if it unfolds during shorter interaction sequences. The aim is to analyze how and when the actors within youth care portray successful cooperation, and which discursive patterns are involved in the construction of this phenomenon. The empirical basis for this study is formed by 147 recorded interviews with institution-placed youths, their parents, and different occupational categories within the social services and the Swedish National Board of Institutional Care. The personal interactive aspect of cooperation among actors in youth care is important to the success of a collaboration. This aspect also appears to have significance for producing and reproducing joint collaboration identities. However, joint collaboration identities and the coherence triad can limit the sphere of cooperation to the youth care entities: the juvenile (or his/her parents) is left out.