About Caipe
CAIPE is dedicated to the promotion and development of interprofessional education (IPE) with and through its individual and corporate members, in collaboration with like minded organisations at home, including the Higher Education Academy, and abroad, including the European Interprofessional Education Network (EIPEN), the International Association for Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice (InterEd) and the Network Towards Unity for Health (Network: TUFH).
CAIPE acts on the belief, corroborated by a growing body of evidence, that well planned IPE can cultivate closer collaboration not only between professions but also between organisations and with service users and their carers; collaboration which, in turn, can improve care and quality of life for individuals, families and communities. Towards those ends, CAIPE provides information and advice through its website, bulletins, papers and outlets provided by others including a series of books in association with Wiley Blackwell and its close association with the Journal of Interprofessional Care. These resources are complemented by its workshops to facilitate development in IPE, exchange and mutual support between members and others, and reinforced by presentations at national and international conferences.
Since it was founded in 1987, CAIPE has risen to the challenge to promote and develop IPE whenever and wherever professions need help in responding together to complex needs beyond the capacity of any one of them alone, most poignantly when lapses in communication and trust contribute to undetected abuse of children or clinical errors. Its boundaries have extended accordingly, embracing all fields of health and social care, including patient safety, public health and touching on environmental enhancement and protection.
It has readily made its experience and expertise available to support the promotion and development of IPE worldwide, although its priorities remain to channel finite resources into the development of IPE in the UK, and with its partners in the Republic of Ireland, to further collaboration in services for chronically sick, disabled and vulnerable adults and older people, on the one hand, and for children, young people and their families, on the other.
The range of relevant professions has widened accordingly, each field of
collaborative practice having its own configuration. Whilst doctors, nurses,
social workers and allied health professions comprise the core, much of the
challenge now lies in engaging others such as lawyers, police officers,
probation officers and schoolteachers. Indeed, it is hard to conceive of any
profession capable of exercising its public accountability without
collaboration with others and opportunities to learn with, from and about them.
The challenge far outstrips CAIPE’s capacity to
respond alone, as a charity and company limited by guarantee dependent
primarily on income from members’ subscriptions. It seeks therefore to optimise
its impact by working with others, in the best tradition of the collaboration
that it espouses, acknowledging and appreciating their commitment in common
cause.