Multi-agency services: getting strategic partners on board

This section relates to involving strategic partners and getting them on board. As well as general considerations, it covers:

• Communicating the benefits
  
  
• Identifying the right service partners
  
  
• Getting the governance right
  
  
• Putting partnership agreements in place

"It is about developing strong partnerships in the first instance: if these are in place you have sustainability."
Local authority education officer, extended schools pathfinder projects evaluation, 2004

General considerations

To influence the broader pattern of service delivery in your area, it is vital to engage all relevant agencies in the development of the multi-agency service. This includes the challenge of involving services to provide a proactive, preventive service. In practice this means working strategically with more senior service managers to look at how resources are distributed, which approaches work best, and how individual agencies and the multi-agency service can mutually benefit from new ways of working.

The development of children's trusts and joint commissioning provides a framework for these discussions to take place, however this work is likely to entail a number of demands on your skills and time, for example:

• Influencing complex situations even though the usual levers of power and status may be in short supply
  
  
• Building trust between professionals and services
  
  
• Knowing when to act collaboratively and when to be autonomous
  
  
• Being accessible to both staff and partners

There are a number of skills and behaviours described in Championing Children that relate to this aspect of your work, in particular 'providing direction' and 'working with people'.

Lessons from programmes such as Sure Start and the extended schools pathfinder projects show that, while many strategic partners will be helpful and willing to engage, you may encounter some other less helpful attitudes, which could adversely affect the partnership. For example:

• Some statutory agencies may not want to engage with the new agenda, for example by reconfiguring their services or redirecting funding in order to locate staff within the centre.
  
  
• There may be some resource-related hostility from some statutory agencies. Some agencies may feel that they would rather have the money and 'do their own thing' than work with a multi-agency service.
  
  
• Some agencies and providers, for example childcare providers or community play schemes, may fear that schools are duplicating the efforts of local services and reducing demand for their services.
  
  
• Some voluntary agencies may feel that they have been working in this way for some time, yet are not being consulted or included in the development of multi-agency working.
  
  
• Some statutory professionals may feel that they are getting less favourable access to equipment and resources compared with the new multi-agency service.
  
  
• If service delivery issues have not been resolved there may be frustration around the duplication of services to the same families.

"I don't feel we were involved enough - we thought it was going to be about involving existing services, but this hasn't happened."
Pre-school learning alliance coordinator, Sure Start evaluation, 2005

The issues are most successfully resolved through a coordinated partnership approach. This means service managers have to work with others at service manager level or above to address issues such as:

• Staffing the service
  
  
• Reconfiguring core services to take account of the remit of the integrated service, to ensure that services are not duplicated
  
  
• Clarity about the levels and types of additional need you can address within the service
  
  
• Information sharing
  
  
• Referral systems
  
  
• Training and development

Communicating the benefits

One very helpful way forward can be to communicate the benefits for statutory agencies of collaborating at a strategic level. For example, the Sure Start national evaluation identified the difficulty that statutory agencies have in delivering a preventive agenda, even when the will is there to do so. Supporting an early intervention multi-agency service can help statutory agencies develop this aspect of their remit.

"We very much need - and want - to look at preventive services, but because of the demands on child protection, it is still very difficult for us in social services to prioritise that aspect."
Operational manager, Sure Start national evaluation, 2005

Other potential benefits for partner agencies are:

• It can be an efficient and effective way of sharing information about young people.
  
  
• Co-location should provide quicker access to services and contribute to positive outcomes for young people and their families.
  
  
• They will be able to access increased resources for interventions and support for young people.
  
  
• A shared location and joint ways of working should increase their organisation's ability to meet the needs of children and young people through:
  - increased knowledge of interventions and support being provided to shared clients
  - closer working relationships with other service providers in the area
  - increased awareness of issues and services across the patch in general.
  
  
• There is the opportunity to access support and training for their staff.
  
  
• There is the opportunity to shape activities to contribute to their specific targets and aims.

Identifying the right service partners

There is a range of agencies and providers who can help you deliver your vision for children and families. The precise balance and the level of staffing will depend on the age range of the children and young people you are working with and, crucially, the requirements of the local community. This helps to avoid the situation where services are provided with the best of intentions but receive little uptake.

Click for more on identifying service partners in our section on building the workgroup.

Getting the governance right

Evidence from children's centres suggests that strategic collaboration and support happens most successfully when there is a management or steering group of more senior managers from the agencies in the partnership.

Click for more on setting up governance arrangements.

Putting partnership agreements in place

Even where you have sound relationships in place and a mutual understanding of what you are doing, it helps to reinforce this with formal partnership agreements (also known as service level agreements). If you have a steering group on which the relevant agencies are represented, it may be possible to develop these agreements as part of the governance arrangements.

Click for more on what might go into a partnership agreement.

Further resources

Partnership Assessment Tool
Find out more about the readiness of your core group of agencies to work in a collaborative way. Produced by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, this tool provides a quick 'health check' for your local partnerships. Based around six principles, it graphically identifies problem areas and offers a shared language for tackling barriers to partnership working.

Integrated Care Network
This website is a government service to help frontline organisations deliver flexible services to adults and children. It includes resources and information on strategic partnership working, including sample partnership agreements.