Introduction

In institutional settings such as health and social care services, multi-agency meetings are the forum for implementing policies and procedures of interagency operations and service user participation. In Chapter 1, multi-agency meetings are conceptualised as boundary spaces that bring together professionals from different professions and welfare agencies, service users and (sometimes) their next of kin or lay representatives. This makes the communicative and interactional processes important, as it is through face-to-face meetings that the everyday practices of professionals and service users are examined, directed and reviewed in a formal setting.

The multi-agency meetings examined in this book are from a number of countries, contrasting welfare regimes and different sectors of health and social care, and they are formulated through different legal jurisdictions. However, as will become clear, there are a number of important similarities. The book does not propose to provide a comparative analysis, but together the analyses suggest that there is something particular about the frame, structure and function of multi-agency meetings that promotes certain interactional practices and addresses interactional dilemmas. This reflects the function of the multi-agency meeting as an organisational procedure for processing people and entities, as occurs in a team meeting or home visit, which requires participants to conform to certain conventions and constraints of turn allocation, topic progression, role performance, politeness, delicacy and so on.

This chapter first questions the notion that meetings should be treated as formal events for making plans and decisions. Instead, it argues that they should be approached as complex social and interactional encounters that draw on everyday notions of what constitutes appropriate organisational interaction. Second, the chapter examines the literature that depicts meetings as rituals and ceremonies in which the values and expectations of organisational practice are enacted. It presents the concept of ‘degradation and integration ceremonies’ as particularly relevant to social welfare meetings where the identity of service users is exposed to the scrutiny of professionals. Third, the literature on talk and interaction in meetings is discussed, with key analytical concepts examined, such as the organisation and structure of meetings, the role and action of the chair, turn-taking and selection, topic management and progression, and decision making.