Types of social capital: tools to explore service integration?

This paper opens with an introduction to the current Scottish legislation and policy context relating to the integration of children’s services. It offers the view that integrated service policy is framed by the concept of social capital and the notion of social capital building and goes on to introduce the concepts of types of social capital as tools with which to examine professional networks and identities. The article sets policy documentation concerning the specific teacher and speech and language therapist working relation within wider Scottish policy that seeks better integrated children’s services through the roll-out of the Integrated Community Schools (ICS) programme. Finally, the paper identifies some of the difficulties inherent in ICS transformations, and suggests that practitioners and their leaders and managers need new conceptual tools such as types of social capital with which to examine professional connections if they are to change children’s services and achieve the policy goals of social justice and inclusion.