Research on Issues in Collaboration between Social Workers and Lawyers

Abstract

Positive collaboration between social workers and lawyers is an increasingly important issue in social work practice as the arena of professional interaction enlarges in court-related work with families. This paper presents the results of two recent studies of interprofessional collaboration. One study found that atttitudes toward collaboration between social workers and lawyers are more positive than earlier studies indicate, when the social workers have received intensive training in court-related work. The other study tested an educational model to prepare social work students for interprofessional collaboration.