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Marte meo and coordination meetings : MAC
Bok av Ingegerd Wirtberg
In the early 1990s two sets of experiences coincided and eventually resulted
in the development of Marte Meo and Co-ordination Meetings
(MAC).
The first concerned my experience of inter-agency effectiveness in
Sweden. In my work as an external supervisor and trainer in my hometown
I often came across the same children, but in different professional
contexts. They and their families had been referred to different agencies
and the reason for the referral was often a teacher who expressed
her concern about the childs development. The school often described
these children as having interaction and learning problems. It was also
common that the agencies to whom the children were referred the Social
Services, Child Guidance Clinics, agencies for children with special
needs etc. did not share the schools definition of the problem. This was
sometimes true even for the childs parents.
However, the general consensus from the professionals was that the
family should receive some form of help, and that this work would then
(hopefully) result in the child performing better in school. It could also
be that the different agencies disagreed in their evaluation of the seriousness
of the childs problem or whose responsibility it was to help.
More than once I witnessed schools and other agencies criticise each
other, each of them often questioning the way in which the other defined
and carried out their professional responsibilities.
This kind of experience strengthened the conviction that there must
surely be a fairly simple and practical way for the agencies created by
society in order to protect and ensure childrens safety and development
to co-operate more effectively, and use their resources and knowledge
in a more co-ordinated fashion.
Another clearly observed pattern was that when the parents of the
child did not share the professionals view of the childs need for support,
the resulting conflict often stopped the child from receiving any
kind of support.
A short history
0-titel-innehall-x.indd 7 2013-02-11 19.01
8 The second was coming into contact with and learning the videobased
model named Marte Meo. I helped introduce Marte Meo into
Sweden in the late eighties and although at that time nothing was
known (more than anecdotal evidence) regarding the effectiveness of
the model, it quickly became apparent that there was a great deal of
interest to implement it in different professional settings. A colleague
and friend Professor Kjell Hansson constantly reminded me about
the lack of evidence, and in particular what he said was my lack of responsibility
in introducing a model whose effectiveness was unknown.
His friendly pressure was very helpful, and the decision was made to
research the model and its effectiveness.
These two sets of experiences were the starting point of what later
became MAC. One of the core ideas that form the foundation of MAC
is that the child can be offered help in that context where her problem
is first observed and identified in this case, the school. In practice, this
means that when the school seeks contact with parents, it is to ask for
their consent so that the teacher can get extra help in the classroom to
better support their child. Succeeding experience has shown that few parent
turns down this offer.
In the early stages of planning a pilot-project it became apparent that
some kind of social construction a story or narrative that could be
accepted by all parts was needed to keep the system of school and
parents co-ordinated, and create a co-operative frame. Such a frame
would help elicit the parents blessing in the schools attempt to support
their children, and offer the school a rationale that would justify
the extra expenditure of time and energy in the classroom. The idea of
how this should happen in practice was initially ra