@article{ref1,
title="Partnerships: survey respondents' perceptions of inter-professional collaboration to address alcohol-related harms in England",
journal="Critical public health",
year="2013",
author="Thom, Betsy and Herring, Rachel and Bayley, Mariana and Waller, Seta and Berridge, Virginia",
volume="23",
number="1",
pages="62-76",
abstract="Tackling alcohol-related harms crosses agency and professional boundaries, requiring collaboration between health, criminal justice, education and social welfare institutions. It is a key component of most multi-component programmes in the United States, Australia and Europe. Partnership working, already embedded in service delivery structures, is a core mechanism for delivery of the new UK Government Alcohol Strategy. This article reports findings from a study of alcohol partnerships across England. The findings are based on a mix of open discussion interviews with key informants and on semi-structured telephone interviews with 90 professionals with roles in local alcohol partnerships. Interviewees reported the challenges of working within a complex network of interlinked partnerships, often within hierarchies under an umbrella partnership, some of them having a formal duty of partnership. The new alcohol strategy has emerged at a time of extensive reorganisation within health, social care and criminal justice structures. Further development of a partnership model for policy implementation would benefit from consideration of the incompatibility arising from required collaboration and from tensions between institutional and professional cultures. A clearer analysis of which aspects of partnership working provide 'added value' is needed.<p />",
language="en",
issn="0958-1596",
doi="10.1080/09581596.2012.724770",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2012.724770"
}