The Functional Map of Health and Social Care

Abstract

This chapter looks at issues of interprofessional working through taking the perspective of the functional map of health and social care. The functional map is an attempt to provide an overview of all the work roles in the sector in an integrated and coherent way. It does this by looking at how those who work in the sector aim to meet the needs of service users, whatever their professional background and training and however this is carried out, by a single profession or through interprofessional work.

This chapter draws from the work of the Care Sector Consortium’s Functional Mapping Project for Health and Social Care. The two authors were closely involved with that project. Lindsay Mitchell was project director of the team of consultants from Prime R&D Ltd which undertook the research and development work. Margaret Coats is the director of the CSC and was responsible for overseeing the progress of the project and now for ensuring that the functional map is used to its optimum value in the ongoing work of the Consortium. Both authors wish to acknowledge the huge debt to the considerable number of individuals and organisations in the sector who made valuable contributions to the work, members of the Consortium who guided the progress of the project, and to Tom Caple and Jackie Sturton, colleagues at Prime who formed the project team.