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This can be termed the ‘JB effect’. The benefits of the JB effect might be more pervasive than the achievement of limited, although welcome, outcomes for particular individuals. The repeated experience of cross-agency contact and cooperation in the addressing of particular difficulties for individuals might well contribute to a ‘culture’ of interagency contact and collaboration among the junior to middle managers in provider organisations who have been drawn into discussion of the problems. This then might seep ‘upward’ through hierarchies by a process of ‘osmosis’ or absorption and by carrying these habits of working ‘upward’ when promoted.

It reflects the frequently observed effect that as individuals work up though each agency, and acquire greater decision-making and budgetary power, they may well think more in terms of loyalty to the agency and less in terms of the costeffectiveness of overall service delivery to a population who have, very often, ‘cross-agency’ needs. This may be an over-simplistic assessment and the ‘in reality’ caveat should be noted. Senior members of local authority departments and agencies often appear at least as enthusiastic as anyone else in expressing the need for more holism in service delivery.

Community partners tended to be in a minority, reacting to agendas that had already been predetermined to a considerable extent. Key community issues were being defined as ‘off limits’, out of the frame, beyond the regeneration pale. Each of Lukes’ dimensions of power was potentially problematic. The role of community representatives emerged as a particular problem. This was described as a stressful role, squeezed between the hopes and aspirations of those people whom the representatives were supposed to be representing and those on the board who might have preferred not to hear them; “stuck in the middle” as one community professional explained it, potentially viewed by other parts of the community “as part of the problem rather than as part of the solution”.