Child protection and interagency collaboration

Abstract

Improving interagency collaboration can be regarded as one of the most important public management challenges for governments in the 21st century, in New Zealand and in other countries. Since the election of a Labour-led government in New Zealand in 1999, a second wave of state sector reforms has been introduced. At the heart of these reforms is the desire by the government to adopt new ways of working – in partnerships with communities, and in a joined-up way across government sectors. Such approaches have been heralded as a panacea for the endemic fragmentation and ‘siloisation’ that is attributed to the first wave of state sector reforms started in the mid-1980s. The underlying philosophy of these ‘new’ approaches to policy development and implementation seems commonsensical. This article looks at the Strengthening Families Strategy as a case study of interagency collaboration in the field of child welfare and protection.