In our organization, we have been focusing on multi-institutional cooperation for quite some time, which is also why this project was created. The aim was to develop a system of collaboration between different sectors working with young people at risk. The topic of stakeholder cooperation in an international context is ambivalent, because the system of support for young people and their families functions differently across European countries (in our case Slovenia, Slovakia, and Iceland). This diversity can be a valuable source of inspiration, but at the same time may lead to oversimplifications or distortions in understanding the roles and competencies of institutions.
National-level cooperation within the project was carried out through intervision meetings and a national training, where we aimed to answer the question “Is cooperation actually possible?”. In our research, conducted through focus groups, we also identified the skills that need to be trained as prerequisites for successful cooperation. These include the ability to share responsibility, create joint solutions and decisions, and understand one’s own competencies as well as the competencies of others.