Planning for disaster: developing a multi-agency counselling service
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Planning for disaster: developing a multi-agency counselling service WJ Gregory and G Midgley* University of Hull Multi-agency planning is becoming increasingly important to organisations, especially those concerned with delivering services for the bene®t of the community. This paper describes how a modi®ed version of the methods from soft systems methodology (SSM), chosen through methodological re¯ections informed by critical systems thinking, was used to support the planning of a multi-agency counselling service that could be activated in the event of a disaster. Representatives of nineteen agencies were involved in this exercise, working together in six, one-day workshops. Feedback from participants, using four evaluation criteria (derived from the principles of SSM and the stated priorities of workshop participants), suggests that the methods of SSM, modi®ed as described, show a great deal of promise as a support to multi-agency planning. Keywords: community OR; critical systems thinking; disaster response; health service; multi-agency working; process of OR; soft OR; soft systems methodology
Introduction This paper describes a set of six, one-day workshops where representatives from nineteen agencies, in a County in the North of England, came together to plan the basis for a counselling network that could be activated in the event of a disaster. We will begin by describing the phenomenon of multi-agency working, which provides an important challenge to operational researchers and systems practitioners seeking to support the provision of services to local communities. We will then go on to outline our initial contacts with the multi-agency group, and detail our decision to use the methods offered by soft systems methodology (SSM).1,2 This decision was informed by critical systems thinking (CST) which, amongst other things, asks researchers to choose or design methods according to their own and stakeholders' perceptions of the situation being dealt with.3±5 The choice of SSM methods was therefore not automatic, but seemed to us to offer the best way forward in the circumstances. Having provided the necessary background, we will proceed to detail our intervention, focusing in particular on the dif®culties we experienced in co-ordinating debate (resulting in some modi®cations of the SSM methods). We will also discuss the learning outcomes generated from the process. We will then re¯ect on the intervention in the light of feedback from participants, arguing that our work can be considered successful according to four criteria (generated
*Correspondence: Dr G Midgley, Centre for Systems Studies, Business School, University of Hull, Hull, HU6 7RX, UK.
from the priorities of participants and the stated purposes of SSM). This will allow us to reach some conclusions about the utility of the methods of SSM for supporting multiagency planning. Multi-agency working In recent years there has been an incre
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