Multi-agency collaborations to support wellbeing amongst care-experienced children and young people in school and during transition to Further Education college: stakeholder perspectives on facilitators, challenges and innovations

Evans, Rhiannon ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0239-6331 2026. Multi-agency collaborations to support wellbeing amongst care-experienced children and young people in school and during transition to Further Education college: stakeholder perspectives on facilitators, challenges and innovations. Child & Family Social Work Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Multi-agency collaboration to address care-experienced children and young people’s mental wellbeing has been advocated as a way of attending to complex needs while avoiding fragmented support. Key sectors with a statutory role include education, mental health and social care, and there is increasing interest at a UK and global scale about stakeholder experiences of multi-agency collaboration and how sectors work together when young people transition into further education settings. This paper considers interview reports from secondary schools, FE colleges, social care and mental health teams, drawing on a complex systems framework as a lens into organisational and agent-level interactions. Findings highlight mutual professional respect and a focus on shared outcomes as key facilitators for multi-agency working. Challenges related to the flow of information between organisations and knowledge gaps around understanding childhood trauma. The findings also report boundary-spanning roles which overcome some of the identified challenges. Policy and practice implications include: prioritising close-working between sectors; harnessing collaborations around a core set of goals, with schools as a focal point; and further developing innovative boundary-spanning roles. Research implications include exploring multi-agency dynamics in other contexts, and understanding how carers interact with education, mental health and social care sub-systems.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Publisher:	Wiley
ISSN:	1356-7500
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	23 January 2026
Date of Acceptance:	1 December 2025
Last Modified:	23 Jan 2026 12:17
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/184144

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