‘A problem shared is a problem halved’. For many people working in the third sector, partnerships are how we reach all of the people we need to. When resources are scarce, or there are relatively few people in a geographical area that need our support, finding ways to reach all of those we can help can be a real problem. We must all share the problem, collaborate with others in the sector and work to provide the services we need to.
Political leverage
In our sector, there are some great examples of charities working together to campaign for a joint cause. For example, the Care and Support Alliance is a coalition of more than 70 charities that all support disabled people, older people or carers. Over the past few years the groups have had a huge impact on the Care Act and social care provision, influencing the decision making process and the content of the Act and its regulations. For Sense, playing a key role in the alliance has made a huge difference to our policy and campaigns work and undoubtedly the needs of deafblind people would not have been as well represented in the process if we had not been a part of it.
There are many examples of joint campaigning in the charity sector, however, when it comes to working together on service provision, many are reluctant to adopt this practice.
Bringing beneficiaries together
Collaboration between different charities and service providers is essential to ensure that there isn’t a postcode lottery of service provision. In an area where one charity has services but others don’t, resource pooling and sharing expertise is one way to address the problem. For instance, there may be 20 disability organisations in the same area working with similar groups, but the people they are supporting never get the opportunity to meet up and enjoy activities together. Similarly, staff can also benefit from the opportunity to work and meet up with others in a similar field and share ideas and experiences.
We know it can be done. At Sense we are been working in partnership with the Macular society. We both support older people with sight loss and our respective members want to support others with similar and related conditions. We have agreed that it would be good idea to signpost each other’s organisations and look for ways to pool resources at a local level and provide more opportunities for older people with sight loss to come together and make a difference in their local communities.
Investment and commissioning
I think the sector can be better at engaging with each other. This is something we need to do better if we want to be seen as a credible option for investment and to provide services. For commissioning purposes, showing we are linking the people we support in with the local community is key. But this isn’t where this ends - we must also share principles of good practice, co-operation and cross referrals between services.
Partnership work is hard; there is no question of that. Everyone comes to the table with their own ideas and reaching a workable compromise takes time and skills. But I think that, as leaders in the third sector, we don’t train people to run multiple relationships, instead we train people to work in silos. We all talk about partnerships a lot, but shifting this from conversation to reality is something we all need to work on.
As a sector, I believe that we are stronger together and should be actively seeking opportunities to work with each other, both in our campaigns and services. This will lead to us having a greater impact and ultimately providing better services to the people we support.
Richard Kramer is deputy chief executive of deaf blind charity Sense.
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