I need help creating a thesis and an outline on Communities of Practice. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide. An abstract is required. A clear example of the rising demand for communities of practice has been in the area of disabled children and their families whose experience usually lies at the end of the continuum of associating with various agencies and practitioners. In the past days, families of disabled children could come into contact with up to ten agencies in any given year and had to attend up to twenty appointments at clinics. For children plagued with intricate health care needs, these numbers can be astounding, leading to a bewildering situation. Some experts have warned that the absolute number of professionals who may take part in supporting a disabled child in the community can usually lead to a lack of continuity and coordination thus leaving families into confusion over whom to contact concerning specific problems (Collins & Foley, 2008).
It is apparent that numerous children with disabilities comprehend the need to consult a range of people and value the role they play in their welfare. However, their experience of disjointed services, the numbers of individuals involved, and the absence of “child-centeredness’ present a clear example of how the role of various practitioners need to be well coordinated. Ideally, the idea of communities of practice coming together is a critical step in the endeavor by the government to deliberate on how best to deal with children matters. The deliberation about the challenges for communities of practice working together to meet the set standards and to respond to the opinions of children and families mainly focuses on structures or issues of the knowledge base, workplace, and professional cultures, ethics as well as mind-sets. However, the manner in which different practitioners perceive children and construct their conceptions of childhood brings an additional layer to the equation. Naturally, the manner in which children’s services are formed largely depends on how childhood is constructed. For this reason, positioning children as ‘in need’ of things such as care, control, and education instead of concentrating on their evolving capacities can lead to a change in the current assembly of services (Foley & Rixon, 2014).
