När samverkan får erkännande. Beskrivna och observerade erfarenheter från ungdomsvården

Previous collaboration research shows that problems and conflicts sometimes arise as a part of collaboration. This book analyzes successful cooperation unfolding during shorter interaction sequences. In this study I endeavour to describe the contributing factors that are necessary to achieve the phenomenon of a successful collaboration. I do this partially with help from studies published in previous literature, but especially by analyzing my own empirical material: narratives from the interviewees and field notes. The aim is to analyze how and when the actors within youth care portray successful cooperation, and which discursive and interactive 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, and 119 field observations of organized meetings and informal meetings before and after organized meetings, during visits to youth care institutions in Sweden, social services offices, and the Swedish National Board of Institutional Care. The material is analyzed with the help of insights from Georg Simmel (1950/1964), Theodore Caplow (1968), and Erving Goffman (1959/2004). In this study, markers are used to define successful cooperation in the empirical material, so that actors who belong to at least three different categories will be identified. The personal interactive aspect of cooperation among actors in youth care is important to the success of 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. The professional actors can also shape a coherent triad with young people or parents in cases where past conflicts arise. When some professionals create a distance from other professional partners, conflicts can be erased generating new conditions for coherence of the triad. Construction and reconstruction of collaboration success is an ongoing, interactive process. Presentation of the proper interaction moral is created and re-created during interactions and appears in the myriad everyday interactions. Coherent triads and success points of interest that are beneficial for the juvenile in the situation also create the image of a positive development for the juvenile. In this way, common identities of interplay that are useful for the juvenile are being created and elucidated. The physical presence of the juvenile in these situations is especially important for the “successful collaboration.”