Collaboration and social-educational networks for the inclusion of vulnerable children

Abstract

There is a social and professional unders-
tanding that the stakeholders and the so-
cial and educational entities that work
with vulnerable and at-risk children need
to collaborate to better ensure that such
children are protected and included. Co-
llaboration between social and educatio-
nal agents can be achieved through both
formal and informal networks that work at
the macro, meso and the micro levels and
in different ways depending on the auto-
nomous community they operate in, and
each experience can provide lessons for
moving forward in other settings.
This article is part of an on-going research
project being carried out in the Basque
Country, within a broader and coordina-
ted project on social and educational in-
novation networks for inclusion. It analy-
ses the process of building and developing
a social-educational network for vulnerable children within a specific context. The
results point to the value of this alterna-
tive form of social-educational action, as
well as the difficulties and challenges it
poses. Although the interrelationship bet-
ween formal and informal networks is not
clearly established in the literature, our
contribution offers solid arguments for in-
tegrating them. Any undertaking that seeks
social cohesion must integrate professio-
nal, community and policy dimensions.