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Level 2 - Working In Partnership How well is the Partnership doing and how can it be helped? This section answers these questions. Click on the questions to jump to those answers. How do we know what an effective partnership looks like? What kind of indicators should we look for? What's involved in partnership development? What is required for successful partnership working? Before we can talk about how well we are doing, we need to be clear about what it is we are trying to do! Chapter nine of Valuing People: a new strategy for learning disability for the 21st century reminds us that the government objective to promote holistic services for people with a learning disability through effective
partnerships aims to promote rights, independence, choice and inclusion. The implications are:
- Local Partnership Boards will need to ensure the availability of supports and service options to meet people's needs and wishes
- Agencies responsible for mainstream housing, education, health, employment and leisure will be fully included in local planning and commissioning
- Greater integration between agencies will open up wider options for everyone.
- People with learning disabilities and their families will be given the opportunity to be involved in local partnerships.
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How do we know what an effective partnership looks like? There are several checklists available for seeing how well your partnership is progressing. They are broadly similar and we have set out the key aspects so that readers can choose the post suitable. The Audit Commission report Developing Productive Partnerships (Audit Commission, 2002) http://www.district-audit.gov.uk/home.html identifies a number of critical
factors for fruitful partnerships:
- Shared purpose - this may include unambiguous mission statements and clear terms of reference
- Resources - partnership performance is dependent on the resources it can draw upon. To help make the best use of resources, be clear about those that are within the control of the partnership, establish clear criteria for the allocation of resources and consider the resources required over the life of the project to avoid over commitment. Many successful partnerships invest in capacity, in the form of a project team, to take the work of the partners
forward
- Clear indicators for measuring success - as well as developing a strategy, partnerships need to develop baseline indicators, milestones, targets and performance monitoring. These need to be specific and relevant to the work of the partnership.
Chapter four of Keys to Partnership suggests some helpful questions to consider when trying to evaluate 'how well are we working'. These include:
- Do we share the same values and aspirations?
- Do we have agreed priorities about what needs to change?
- Is there a shared willingness to explore new service options?
- Is there agreement about the boundaries of partnership?
- Are we clear and comfortable about who will be responsible for what within the partnership?
- Is there confidence that each party's resource commitment is clear and open?
- Is there effective, committed leadership to the partnership vision?
- Are there people with the time and capacity to take forward the partnership agenda?
- Is there trust, openness and good will between key people?
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What kind of indicators should we look for?  Partnership literature suggests the following criteria against which partnerships can be evaluated:
- Effectiveness - extent to which partnerships have achieved their stated objectives - these need to be clear, explicit and measurable
- Efficiency - the apportionment of costs and benefits needs to be equally distributed between partners - unless inequalities have been settled and agreed
- Equity - is the partnership diverting resources away from or postponing investment in other localities, groups or service users?
- Acceptability - are the aims, outcomes and processes of the partnership arrangements acceptable to those who use services and to the wider public. Receiving feedback from users of services will be a key part of the evaluation. For example, the intrusiveness of assessment procedures, the range of information available about services, the choice and control users can exercise over a service
- Accessibility - access to information about services and criteria for receiving services, geographical, processes of assessment and waiting times
- Appropriateness - evaluation of appropriateness needs to consider a range of views on what is appropriate for a particular need
- Accountability - refers to the accountability of the partner organisations and the professionals involved to outside stakeholders e.g. users of the services - the robustness of the governance arrangements. Questions to be asked include: - do the external accountability mechanisms (NHS and Local Government) undermine the partnership activities?
- Ethics - refers to the importance of asserting the neutrality of and independence of evaluation
- Responsiveness and change - speed and accuracy with which a service provider responds
- Implementation and roll-out - understanding and communication of the intentions of the partnership.
Source: Partnerships between health and social services: developing a framework for evaluation (Policy and Politics, vol 30 no1 p115-27, 2002) Caroline Glendinning.
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What's involved in partnership development? Partnership development, like other aspects of organisational development involves a range of processes that form the foundation for integration. These include:
- A planned process of change
- A process that is participative and empowering
- Clear and on-going communication
- Support for teams and teamwork that encourages ownership and management of processes, systems and relationships
- Structures that promote innovation, learning and change
- Action research processes that combine learning and doing - an iterative process where the lessons from one step inform the actions of another.
The Integrated Care Network website is useful here
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What is required for successful partnership working? An important lesson from work done on partnerships is the need to recognise the multi-layered nature of partnership working when it is put into action. Decisions are taken at various levels within and outside organisations. Gaining better outcomes for individuals and
communities depends on these levels working together in a reasonably cohesive way. It is crucial to be able to pinpoint those key layers of decision making and the essential infrastructure that underpin them. This can be summarised as 1. The establishment of strategic partnerships that set the overarching framework and objectives for the services in question, and that meet the necessary governance requirements 2. Means of engaging with people with learning
disabilities, families and other local people, including those beyond the traditional service boundaries, in ways that make sense to them and that are properly influential on key resource and other decision making 3. Ways of promoting ownership of the partnership from leaders, managers and staff, through effective communication and a sharing of the potential benefits. 4. Clarity over how significant shifts in service patterns are to be achieved through the
planning and operationalisation of key strategic decisions 5. Inter-agency assessment systems that ensure shared ownership of decisions to commit resources to meet the holistic needs of individuals 6. Networks or systems that facilitate integrated information and other supports at individual and aggregate levels 7. The sharing of resources through pooled budgets and other means 8. A comprehensive shared local training policy and programmes 9. Joint workforce
planning mechanisms that consider how to develop a workforce that can both deliver and strategically commission services. 10. An integrated monitoring and review system that results in a shared understanding of the effectiveness of current services, and thus the evidence base for changes in the future. 11. A clear and shared performance and audit approach to provide publicly visible shared ownership of decisions and the use of resources. Most crucially, attention
must be paid to the linkages between these different elements, so that effective inter-agency work at one level is not undermined by its failure to be translated into joint action at another. Understanding decision-making processes is a fundamental ingredient of effective working within and between agencies. Also see Part 3 of 'Valuing People: How are we doing?' Checking our progress. |
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Level 3 Level 3 gives you more resources and help |
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