Too Many Partners A Challenge To Partnership Working

Too Many Partners A Challenge To Partnership Working

Over the past few years, there has been an increase in emphasis on inter-professional working and joined up thinking (Fraser & Matthews 2007). This joint collaboration cuts across all sectors. Whereas this development applies to all areas of public welfare, over the recent years, it has become more evident in health and social sector (Dowling 2004). It has become a central feature of the British social welfare policy, with the UK government emphasizing on partnership working across the National Health Service (NHS), social services, voluntary sector and the community sector as well (Tait& Shah 2007).

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Today, the quality of services delivered in health and social care is dependent upon different professionals working together in partnership (Barrette et al. 2005). Advancement in knowledge and development of innovative approaches to service delivery has led to increased specialization such that it has become impossible to have one professional with sufficient knowledge and skills who can respond to the needs of the society. As such, partnerships have become the key to responding to these needs especially in situations that involve complexities.

This emphasis on partnership working can be attributed to the fact that it plays a critical role in effective delivery of services. There is a general contention that partnership working provides a wide range of services that better meet service user needs and leads to more efficient delivery of these services (Fletcher 2006).It is seen as a powerful for tackling complex and multi-faceted problems that are difficult to be solved by any individual body working alone (Audit commission 2006). According to an Audit commission report (1999) Partnerships can be used to solve difficulties facing local agencies such as policy and operational problems; and is a more productive way of ensuring use of scarce resources more effectively.

Whilst there are undeniably many gains to be drawn from partnership working, making partnerships work can be difficult especially where there are too many partners involved. This is arguably one of the toughest challenges that managers often encounter in the public sector. There are complexity and ambiguity issues that may result when working with too many partners which can generate confusion and weaken accountability (Audit commission 2006)

In this regard, this paper explores the topic of partnership working. It discusses the statement: the ‘problem with partnership working is that there are too many partners’;while drawing on evidence from theory, policy and practice.Further, the paper explores some central concepts of partnership working and evaluates the impact of different policies, professional codes and organizational frameworks on partnership working. Additionally, the paper discusses some of the critical factors that promote or hinder partnership workingsuch as culture, equality and diversity.

Before we further delve further into this topic, we will first define what we mean by partnership working and explore the origin of multi-agency partnership working.

Partnership working concept

The conceptof partnership working is often used in reference to business partnerships that involve two people working together to achieve a common goal. As pointed out by Taylor & Le Riche (2006), this concept remains loosely defined in literature and is often expressed through multiple terminologies. According to a definition on Princeton website, partnership refers to a contract in which two or more persons come together to pool talent and resources with the aim of achieving a common purpose. Others have defined partnership as a business entity in which partners agree to share both profits and losses from the business undertaking.

Perhaps a more succinct definition of ‘partnership’ is that put forth by Huxham & Vangen (2005). These authorsused partnership working in reference toany situation wherein people work across organizational boundaries towards a positive end (Huxham & Vangen 2005).Despite the varied set of definitions, the notion of sharing and agreement is clearly evident from these definitions.

Origin of multi-agency partnership working

It is important to note here that partnership working is not a new phenomenon and has been in existence since the early mid nineteenth century when agencies were working together to reduce poverty in England (Carnwell & Buchanan 2008). However, it was during the years of the Thatcher government that partnership working gained its foundations. With the establishment of the Children Act 1989, inter agency collaboration became a statutory requirement in the provision of health and social care services to children and young people

Whereas this term has been used in the past in the business domain, it has gained grounds in health and social care setting as well over the past few decades.However, in health and social care, this term is strongly influenced by policy. In this regard, Gallant et al. (2002) describes the changing trend of partnership in the past few decades. First, emphasis of partnership was initially on equitable sharing. Thirty years down the line, the WHO stressed the need for citizens to take control over their health and become more self-reliant.

Towards the end of the 21st century, the informed public challenged the quality of services provided in health and social care and began searching for more meaningful interactions with providers (Carnwell & Buchanan 2008).Since th…………………………………………….