partnership improvement

Topics: partnership working, community and voluntary sector

I attended an event today which celebrated the outcomes of the partnership improvement programme (PIP). There was an impressive line up of speakers ranging from my colleague Helen Hughes (who sponsored the programme) to Ed Miliband, Minister for the Third Sector.

In eight council areas, local authority and voluntary sector staff worked together to build capacity to work more effectively in partnership and to model a new way of developing sustainable cross-sector relationships. Satwant Pryce and Enrique Saenz of the London Borough of Waltham Forest and Michael Newstead of Bassetlaw Community and Voluntary Service and Gillian Blenkinsop of Bassetlaw District Council shared some of their local lessons.

There's a very nice summary report - which I'll link to as soon as I can, but I'll summarise a few points here:

Ambition doesn't always match local reality
Pilot participants highlighted numerous practical problems that stand in the way of effective partnership working: insufficient resources; lack of appropriate skills or personnel; unrealistic agendas and tiemscales. In almost all cases, the problem was not essentially about willingness or compliance. Rather it was, in effect, a policy implementation gap; in other words a mismatch between, on the one hand, public policy directives and, on the other, the practical reality on the ground.

Location, location, location (or areas really are different)

When it came to identifying practical, locally appropriate, solutions to identified problems. In almost all cases, these differences could be traced back to key variables

These were:

• the history of cross sector relationships
• attitudes of key staff within councils toward VCOs
• relationships within the voluntary and community sector
• capacity to work together - skills and personnel
  

Governance arrangements:

Pre-partnership agreements were widely proposed as a core element of imporving the governance of cross-sector partnerships; they are a way of addressing purpose and roles, as well as the opportunity to invest in a development phase to enable participants to anticipate and address some of the challenges.

Yes, Minister?

Ed Miliband's speech was also interesting. He's a new minister with a new role in the Cabinet Office, and I guess the title hasn't quite broken in yet. He said he'd rather be called Ed - as being referred to as minister made him think of that television show.

He saw his role as:

1. Making sure Government didn't make things worse. He said he was quite proud that he hasn't introduced a slew of initiatives and he seemed conscious that well-intentioned government intervention can have unintended consequences.
2. Being an effective advocate for cross-sector partnership - and this includes supporting longer term funding for stable budgets - important to everyone, but especially important for small community organisations that need a sense of fiscal continuity
3. Constructive persuasion - getting the principles of the Compact a reality on the ground. Part of this would be through the appointment of a "Compact Commissioner" who can champion the voluntary and community sector
4. Thinking of - and implementing - effective ways to reward innovation and progress.

Incorporating lessons
I picked up a lot of interesting ideas that we'll be trying to carry forward. I'm meeting with Helen tomorrow to look at ways that we can incorporate some of their learning - existing and ongoing - into the PM Partner project.


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