Inter-Agency Partnerships

Partnerships or alliances are teams formed across agencies – often established in a hurry. Partnerships must have clarity of purpose, agreed ways of working and clear lines of accountability and responsibility. They are most successful when based on mutual respect, trust and understanding.

Partnership facilitation is...

Partnership facilitation can be used at the establishment of the partnership, or at the time when people are saying: ‘this partnership is a great idea but it is so stressful and time consuming!’ Stuck, tense or demanding partnerships need assistance to discuss what is going well and what is not working. The goal is to work through and resolve the difficulties and to identify a way forwards.

How does a partnership workshop work?

Timing is key. The best time to host a partnership workshop is at the early planning phase. With all parties in the room, the workshop would clarify and confirm the partnership vision, purpose, values, leadership, accountability, ways of working, ways of managing difficulties and who has which roles.

For those established partnerships that are encountering challenges, the session would focus on what is working well, what is not going well and what needs to change. The session would map out a clearly documented and agreed plan that would re-affirm the vision, purpose, roles, responsibilities and future steps.

Outcomes

A strong partnership that has an agreed and documented pathway forward, knows what it is doing and how it will get on with partnership business.