Results for interviews and focus groupParticipants

Six qualitative interviews were conducted with the network coordinators from April 2020 through to October 2021. After the first two interviews, in the summer of 2020, there was a change of personnel in the position of the network coordinator. Therefore, the last four interviews were conducted with one of the two new persons responsible for coordinating the network. The focus group with members of the advisory group took place in February 2021 with four participants. The Department of Social Services of the city of Munich was represented by two staff members, the Department of Health and the Department of Education and Sports by one each.

A total of 19 interviews were conducted with local professionals in Freiham or surrounding districts: ten in October-December 2020, nine in June-July 2021. Of these, seven professionals were interviewed at both times, three only October-December 2020, two only June-July 2021. One interviewee from October-December 2020 withdrew their informed consent after having read their transcript. Therefore, 18 interviews with eleven local professionals progressed to qualitative content analysis.

Implementation of the intervention

Most of the interviewees reported a general satisfaction with the way the network evolved. Especially in interviews in June-July 2021, local professionals stated that the network had become a reliable platform they could turn to with their matters, and that it was considered as such by other actors in the district, too. However, while most interviewed professionals generally agreed to the idea of Präventionskette Freiham being a network to support children and families, many were unsure about its specific tasks. The diversity of network members was considered an asset by the professionals, allowing them to gain new perspectives and to obtain information that would otherwise be unobtainable. However, it was criticized that there were only few professionals from the health and educational sector attending the working group meetings, despite the network coordinators trying to integrate these actors. In the interviews with professionals from these sectors, it became clear that the COVID-19 pandemic meant a lot of additional work for the professionals, limiting their capacities for networking. Especially professionals from schools were engaged with implementing pandemic control measures and professionals from the municipal health department had to work in COVID-19 task forces instead of pursuing their regular tasks.

According to the local professionals, the network mostly worked on getting the members across different sectors to know each other. Many attendants at these working group meetings said that they had met professionals from other institutions in the network that they had not known before. Furthermore, in some cases, they intended to contact them at a later time. However, no interviewee named a specific case where the network had helped them when working directly with their clients. Also, only in one case an interviewed professional stated that a working group meeting had resulted in a bilateral cooperation. Additionally, some attendants commented that the process of getting to know each other was taking too long and that they would prefer to start working on specific tasks.

“If you are meeting just for the sake of meeting, that is not enough in the long run, at least for me.” (44401).

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, working group meetings of the local network took place virtually. While some professionals stated that this format made it easier to attend the meetings, others said that output-oriented work would be impeded under these conditions.

“Discussing which topics to work on together (…) is currently more difficult with corona [the COVID-19 pandemic]. Everything is just virtual at the moment.” (89616).

Many interviewees agreed that the network was not yet operating as a production network that created palpable output. Beside the COVID-19 pandemic, this was mainly explained with the early development status of the Freiham district. Many institutions relevant for the network were not active in the area yet, and only few residents had already moved in. According to some interviewees, this made it hard to find specific tasks to work on. Furthermore, despite Freiham being a new district, the existing Munich networking structure called REGSAM (“Regionales Netzwerk für Soziale Arbeit”, Regional Network for Social Work) with its focus on the social sector was already active in Freiham. It was expressed to be a challenge to communicate the advantage of a new network to professionals. Furthermore, stakeholders of Präventionskette Freiham and the REGSAM network had to coordinate with each other to avoid conflicting responsibilities.

In the focus group, the cooperation between the three municipal departments in the advisory group was generally described as pragmatic and trusting. However, members of the advisory group reported problems with creating interest for the Präventionskette within the municipal administration. Furthermore, as part of the administration, members of the advisory group were not allowed to communicate directly with political decision makers about the Präventionskette. Only the heads of the municipal departments would be allowed to engage directly with political decision makers. However, their engagement for the network was unclear for the members of the advisory group.

“The leadership here (…) knows about the Präventionskette, I guess, but to what extent she is considering it when making decisions, is completely unclear to me.” (70534).

Facilitators and barriers to implementation

We identified seven core topics that could work as potential facilitators or barriers for a successful implementation of the intervention. An overview can be found in Table 1.

Resources

Availability of resources was often named to be an important factor that could be a facilitator or barrier. Interviewees expressed that both the network coordinators and local institutions needed sufficient funding and, related to that, sufficient human resources to do the work required for running the network. In particular, local professionals stated that limited temporal capacities were a barrier for a stronger engagement with the network. This was perceived to have been amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, which placed additional demands on the workforce from the health care and educational sectors, meaning that time could not be invested in networking.

Administrative and political support

A long-term engagement by the municipal administration and by municipal politics was considered a major contributor to the success of the intervention by many interviewees. During the study period, the network coordinators´ funding was only secured for a limited period of time, and the long-term perspective remained uncertain. Interviewees commented that a lot of resources had to be invested by the network coordinators and the advisory group to secure continued support and funding. These resources could otherwise have been spent on building the network. Local professionals in Freiham expressed the concern that, without the network coordinators, the networking processes that had been happening so far might come to an end. Furthermore, some raised the concern that the uncertain future of the network´s funding might prevent some other local actors from engaging.

Network coordinators

The persons responsible for coordinating the network were considered another important facilitator for the success of the intervention. According to the interviewees, the persons have to be well-connected, be able to integrate the different working cultures of the members of the network and be aware of the specific context in Freiham to set meaningful priorities for the activities of the network. It was also considered an advantage that the network coordinators were not employees of the city administration, but came from another institution, as it allowed them to act more independently.

Network-internal processes

An atmosphere of trust between the members of the local network, transparent communication processes as well as a participatory working culture were identified as facilitators for a successful implementation. Interviewees outlined the need to involve not only members of the local network in decision making processes, but also the target groups of the intervention and other actors in the district of Freiham that are external to the network, such as voluntary organizations and elderly citizens or privately organized day care centers. Furthermore, professionals expressed uncertainty about their roles and tasks within the network, affecting their engagement negatively.

Trans-institutional cooperation

Integrating actors from different sectors into the local network was considered a facilitator for the functioning of the network, as it allowed the network to cover all areas of life for children and adolescents. Additionally, it was stated that it enabled single members of the network to change perspectives and to gain more insights into the needs of the target groups. For trans-institutional cooperation, it was considered important that the members of the network should develop a shared vision with regards to the goals of the intervention. However, barriers to this trans-institutional cooperation were also expressed, mainly that professionals from different institutions often had differing needs that might be hard to integrate. For instance, they were used to different work routines, e.g. when leading discussions or making decisions, according to our interviewees. Furthermore, due to data protection regulations, some professionals said that they were hesitant to talk about specific cases within the working group meetings of the network, as regulations from their institution forbade them to do so.

Table 1 Facilitators and barriers to the implementation of Präventionskette Freiham identified in the interviews with the network coordinators and members of the local network and in the focus group with members of the advisory group Perceived benefits to network members

Many members of the local network stated that the network would have to offer benefits to its members to make an engagement attractive. Interviewees considered being able to expand their personal networks and getting access to information that would otherwise be hard to obtain as the most important benefits. Local professionals wanted to specifically receive information from within the city administration as there were many uncertainties about the future development of the Freiham district.

Output

Participants emphasized the need to create sustainable outputs to achieve structural benefits for the residents instead of using resources towards short-term goals. A barrier to developing long-term output was the perceived need to show quick successes to ensure sustained support from policy-makers and the municipal administration. The early development status of the Freiham district was identified as a general barrier for creating meaningful output. With only few citizens living in the area, interviewees described a lack of real tasks to work on and felt unsure about which activities would become most relevant in the future. One local professional was concerned that these circumstances might lead the network to engage in short-term unsustainable projects, just to be able to showcase output.

Results for the ego-centered network maps

A total of three network maps were drawn by the network coordinators: in April 2020, November 2020 and May 2021 (Fig. 4). As there was a change in the position of the network coordinator in August 2020, the two subsequent network maps were drawn by a different person. This break is represented in the network maps, where the number of included actors dropped from 20 in April 2020 to 13 in November 2020. Over the period of data collection, the number of actors working in Freiham named in the network maps increased from six (30%) in April 2020 to nine (69%) in November 2020 and eleven (69%) in May 2021. When considering only the actors with “strong cooperation”, actors at the municipal level made up the majority during most of the time (7 out of 8 in April 2020; 4 out of 4 in November 2020). This slightly changed at the time of the last network map (3 out of 6 in May 2021). None of the network maps identified an actor from the health sector working locally in the district of Freiham. Overall, most actors that could be assigned to one of the three sectors were from the social services, with only few being part of the health and educational sectors. A lot of actors could not be located to one of the three sectors, mainly among those working in the district. While they were important and well-connected actors in the Freiham area and therefore relevant for the network coordinators, their responsibilities could not be reduced to the health, educational or social sector alone.

Fig. 4

Ego-centered network maps showing the most important collaborators for the network coordinators at the respective time (inner circle: “strong cooperation”; middle circle: “medium cooperation”; outer circle: “weak cooperation”)

Results for the survey with members of the local network

Of the 67 members of the local network invited to participate per e-mail, 25 opened the link to the digital survey. Of these, six dropped out of the survey before or directly after answering the first question and were excluded from the analysis. Among the 19 participants we included, 17 filled out the survey completely and two incompletely.

Overall, 15 participants had joined the regular working group meetings of the network at least every second time since September 2021, three had participated less regularly. A majority of the 19 participants agreed with the statement that they were satisfied with the working group meetings of the local network and that they were able to expand their personal networks through these meetings (Table 2). Opinions were less positive regarding whether participating in the network meetings had been helpful for their daily work or whether it had increased their expertise.

Four participants stated that some of their expectations regarding the network coordinators had not been fulfilled. In the open answer option, participants expressed that they wanted more support for working on specific projects. Furthermore, four participants suggested changes to the local network’s work mode, e.g. reducing the number and length of network meetings and building stronger connections between the local network meetings and the municipal administration. On the other hand, participants noted that the involvement of individual institutions with the network and the exchange of district-related information should be kept as integral parts of the meetings. When asked for relevant missing actors, participants named schools and day-care centers, but also private resident organizations and churches.

Table 2 Results of the survey with members of the local network of Präventionskette Freiham regarding the regular working group meetings. The survey was conducted in August and September 2022