In keeping with one of the Core Features of AMBIT (specifically, Respect local practice and expertise), the AMBIT worker always avoids making assumptions - especially negative assumptions - about the motivations, capacities, and intentions of other agencies and professionals.

It is easy to be drawn into very negative positions as regards these institutions and individuals, either in casual conversation with colleagues, or, worse, with the young person or family:

"Social Workers are always doing this...!"
"Typical doctor...!"

It is important to remember that many of the young people that an AMBIT service works with will have experience of relationship breakdown, hostility or domestic violence between the people that would ideally be working together in support of them.

It is easy for the professionals arrayed around a young person to be drawn into replicating this experience, through some of the Dis-integrativeProcesses that in turn fuel Dis-integratedInterventions.

Biased feedback

There are powerful biases at work, insofar as we tend to remember the one bad outcome, rather than the many interactions that went smoothly. Also, one of the ways that young people or family members may seek to "join" with a new professional, or team, is to criticise the team that has referred them - so that workers in one team will often receive negative appraisals of other teams, but may overlook the possibility that similarly negative things are said about them, too!

Using each other

In keeping with our SupervisoryStructures, team members should be ready to use address with each other, in order to question, and help each other towards a more Integrative understanding of the ProfessionalNetworkMembers.

Rather than be surprised or disappointed by discovering such Dis-integrativeProcesses at work, the AMBIT worker assumes that these processes ALWAYS occur in a complex care network, and in keeping with one of the Core Features of AMBIT (Taking Responsibility for integration) s/he makes the development of a proper understanding of the different roles and responsibilities shared by the ProfessionalNetworkMembers part of everyday practice.

Using the How to speak to a... advice, and SupervisoryStructures, together with tools such as the Dis-integration grid, the KeyWorker will develop a Mentalization-based understanding of the positions of individual components of the care network.