The Inter-Agency Cooperation in Healthcare and Social Services for Substance Misuse and Addiction in Romania: A Case Study
The Inter-Agency Cooperation in Healthcare and Social Services for Substance Misuse and Addiction in Romania: A Case Study

Summary/Abstract: As in many other countries, the Romanian institutional framework for drug prevention, treatment and recovery is based on the concept of integrated services, which presumably enhances the cooperation between professionals from various fields, such as health care, social work, and police force. Using qualitative exploratory design through semi-structured in-depth interviews focused on the perceptions of professionals, the study is delineating two potential lines of conflict, along which divergent perspectives are confronting each other. The first one seethes between personnel and managers, whereas the second simmers between state-funded and privately financed institutions. Our findings reach the conclusion that the incapacity of practitioners to develop efficient collaborative practices is related to the excessive formalisation of professional interactions, associated with the prevalence of a style of management based on formal rules and purely administrative means. They equally suggest that the development of more informal networks of professionals might be more appropriate to the task of improving professional collaboration between practitioners in the field of substance misuse and addiction.

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