What are the Partnership Assessment Tools and How Can They Help?

1. What are the Partnership Assessment Tools and How Can They Help? Eileen Waddington Independent Consultant

2. Origins of the Partnership Assessment Tool • Extensive Research Programmes in the field of Health and Social Care • Policy Imperatives focused on Partnership • Challenge of using knowledge to inform practice • Development of Generic Principles

3. What Can The Partnership Assessment Tool Offer • An evidence based framework • Common language/structure for partners to use • Time out to take stock

4. PARTNERSHIP ASSESSMENT TOOL6 PARTNERSHIP PRINCIPLES • Recognise and Accept the Need for Partnership • Develop Clarity and Realism of Purpose • Ensure commitment and Ownership • Develop and Maintain Trust • Create Robust and Clear Partnership Working Arrangements • Monitor, Measure and Learn

5. PRINCIPLE 1: RECOGNISE AND ACCEPT THE NEED FOR PARTNERSHIP • Identify principal partnership achievements • Identify the factors associated with successful partnership working • Identify the principal barriers to partnership working • Acknowledge the extent of dependency upon others to achieve some of your own goals • Recognise the extent of dependency of others upon you to achieve some of their goals • Acknowledge areas in which you are not dependent upon others to achieve your goals

6. PRINCIPLE 2: DEVELOP CLARITY AND REALISM OF PURPOSE • Successful partnerships are built on shared vision, shared values and agreed service principles • Define clear joint aims and objectives, with objectives expressed as outcomes for users • Ensure joint aims and objectives are realistic • Acknowledge the existence of separate organisational aims and objectives, and their relationship to jointly agreed aims and objectives • Recognise the extent to which the separate aims and objectives of individual partners are enhanced or compromised by the pursuit of joint aims and objectives • Focus partnership effort on areas of likely success

7. PRINCIPLE 3: ENSURE COMMITMENT AND OWNERSHIP • Ensure appropriate seniority of commitment • Ensure sufficient consistency of commitment • Secure widespread ownership within and outside partner organisations • Recognise and nurture individuals with networking skills • Ensure that networks are institutionalised • Promote partnership working through the use of appropriate rewards and sanctions

8. PRINCIPLE 4: DEVELOP AND MAINTAIN TRUST • Ensure all parties are accorded equal status • Ensure fairness in the conduct of the partnership • Ensure fairness in distribution of partnership benefits or gains • Ensure the partnership is able to sustain a level of trust when faced with external problems which inhibit the contribution of individual partners • Ensure that the right people in the right place at the right time • Trust built up within partnerships needs to be protected from any mistrust that develops in parent organisations

9. PRINCIPLE 5: CREATE CLEAR AND ROBUST PARTNERSHIP ARRANGEMENTS • Transparency in the financial resources each partner brings to the partnership • Awareness of the non-financial resources each partner bring to the partnership • Distinguish single from joint responsibilities and accountabilities • Ensure size and complexity of partnership arrangements are commensurate with the identified partnership remit • Develop structures which are time-limited and task-oriented • Ensure prime focus is on process and outcomes not structure and inputs

10. PRINCIPLE 6: MONITOR, MEASURE AND LEARN • Agree a range of success criteria • Create and use arrangements for monitoring and reviewing how well the partnership’s service objectives are being met • Develop arrangements for monitoring and reviewing how effectively the partnership itself if working • Ensure feedback to and from parent organisations • Celebrate and publicise local success and root out continuing barriers • Reconsider/revise partnership aims, objectives and arrangements

11. Using the Tool - What we Learnt • The importance of language • Establishing ground rules for the exercise • Not all principles are of similar importance • Setting up the process is an important starting point in committing to action

12. Using the Tool - What we Learnt(continued) • Scoring and visual representation of findings is popular • Capable of use throughout organisations and charting progress over time • Provides a framework and common vocabulary

13. Rapid Partnership Appraisal Principle 1 Principle 6 D C B A Principle 5 Principle 2 A B C Principle 4 D Principle 3

14. Building up Evidence Based Practice Research Findings Market & use Develop new research questions Distilling the key messages Revise and publish Understanding what the field needs Informed by consultancy work Field testing a prototype Developing an appropriate practical tool

15. Continuous Development Of The Tool • Partnership Assessment Tool Adults • Partnership Assessment Tool Children For use with strategic partnership • Team Assessment Process for Adults • Team Assessment Process for Children For use with front line multi disciplinary teams

16. Some Examples of Assessments Undertaken • Developmental Tool : newly formed Partnership Board • Trouble shooting : Local Strategic Partnership • Charting progress over time : Integrated Mental Health Service • Research/Evaluative Tool : Longitudinal research project

17. Key Messages from our Experience • Probably works better with facilitation • Traditionally a lack of attention to processes of working in partnership • Understanding behaviour/perceptions enables partnership to target remedial behaviour • People often need to customise the Tool • Importance of the link between the knowledge base and practical application

18. Key Messages from our Experience(continued) • Keep it simple and accessible and people will use it • Possibility of tension between use as developmental tool and performance management instrument • Constantly review in light of experience

19. Exercise For The Workshop • Choose one of the tools to use • Complete the exercise individually using a partnership you are involved with (15 mins) • Discuss within your group the experience of using the tool, did it help you understand any more about your partnership working? • Discuss within your group the usefulness or otherwise of the material • How might you use it in the future?