Interprofessional collaboration in social rehabilitation services for dually-involved Estonian youth: Perceptions of youth, parents, and professionals

Collaborative service delivery models are recognized as a best practice for youth receiving juvenile justice services and for those who are dually involved, i.e., also receiving child protection services. This study adds to the literature that has provided youth, parents, and professionals an opportunity to voice their perspectives on interprofessional collaboration (IPC) in juvenile offender social rehabilitation. Individual interviews (n = 22) were conducted with 6 youths, 7 parents, and 9 specialists working with them in an interprofessional, collaboration-based social rehabilitation team in Estonia. Interprofessional frameworks—one from Reeves, Lewin, Espin, and Zwarenstein (2010) and one from Ødegård (2005)—were used to ground the study and aid with data collection and analysis. Findings show the following based on Ødegård’s PINCOM model: (1) Rehabilitation specialists working with children and their parents perceive relational components as the key factors in interprofessional service provision. They believe mutual trust, common understandings, and the “co-creation” effect of problem mapping, goal setting, and problem-solving must emerge among the child, parents, and interprofessional team specialists as a whole for services to work. Youth and parents express a desire to be truly and fully involved in all rehabilitation process stages. They perceived IPC teams as advocates for them and as agents of change. (2) The group-level and procedural aspects of the rehabilitation service need further development to support service provision and ensure the sustainability of the work done by rehabilitation team members who have strived to develop a high level of interprofessionality. In particular, efforts are needed to develop (a) information and communications technology (ICT)-based service administration tools (e.g., tools to support information sharing between agencies and rehabilitation team specialists); (b) ICT solutions which support youth counseling in the forms youth commonly use to communicate; (c) basic training for specialists who wish to work on rehabilitation teams and additional training for experienced team specialists to continue to enhance their skills (such as in ICT). (3) The contextual and organizational aspects identified as critical were reducing steadily increasing bureaucratic burdens, increasing systematic training, and ensuring sufficient state-funding. The rehabilitation specialists perceive their part-time, IPC case-based work as professionally enriching and as being enhanced by their main jobs in other settings (e.g., schools). They believe IPC work should remain part-time as doing IPC full-time may result in burnout given its intensity.