Recommendations

Recommendation 1: Adopt the essential components

If you are a voluntary organisation or a public sector body wanting to increase partnership working and ensure that the strength of the voluntary sector is harnessed, we recommend that you adopt the essential components outlined above.

  1. Take time to build relationships
  2. Develop a shared vision and values
  3. Agree principles of joint working, with documentation
  4. Invest and bring in resources
  5. Build clear cross-sector leadership.

Recommendation 2: Don’t just adopt a model

Just adopting a particular model will not be enough. True system change and transformation needs to ensure that:

  • the voluntary sector is and feels like an equal partner
  • governance structures reflect the importance and value of the sector
  • this becomes the default way of working across your organisation (not just one or two colleagues)
  • activity is aligned across all sectors. Having a shared vision and values will help facilitate partnership working and support system transformation
  • there is senior level buy-in from all organisations at all levels of the system.

This page was last reviewed for accuracy on 14 January 2020