Collaborate’s Autumn Newsletter

The autumn in Collaborate is often a period of reflection, harvesting learning and ideas from the year that is ending, and planning for the year to come. This year the sense of seasonal transition has been even greater as we (happily!) start to spend time together as a team after 18 months online. In the coming months we will be investing time in strengthening our team relationships and renewing our organisational purpose and strategy. We will also bring together the insights from our Hope Inquiry, through which we have been exploring whether the pandemic has moved us closer to Collaborate’s vision of a Collaborative Society.

One source of hope is the marked change in the public debate and policy: collaboration has moved centre stage. We can see this in the ambition and approach of so many places, organisations and sectors which are pushing the boundaries of policy and practice, and we are delighted to be:

• Developing our collaborative leadership offer further through the continued evolution of IGNITE, our systems leadership programme for local authority Chief Executives; year two of the Leading Greater Essex programme; the Essential Skills for Leading Change programme we have been running for Active Partnerships this year; and our new work with the Ministry of Justice supporting local leaders to address the root causes of reoffending;
• Growing our learning partnerships which are exploring place-based systems change, including with Save the Children and the Cornerstone Fund, and most recently with Sport England as a new National Evaluation and Learning Partner for their Local Delivery Pilots; and supporting new communities of practice across the country to develop Human Learning Systems approaches;
• Working with several places determined to maintain the momentum for collaboration and public service reform from the pandemic. These currently include Merton, Kingston, Hounslow, and East Sussex, where we’re helping partners to understand the potential to put human connection at the centre of public services.

One area in particular — the formal creation of Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) and local health and care partnerships — has place-based collaboration at its heart. As we set out in our 2016 report Get Well Soon, collaborative, place-based approaches to health help us refocus from treating illness to creating health, by focusing on the needs and assets in local communities, drawing on the strengths of local government, the voluntary sector and other partners, and bringing services and support together in ways that improve the outcomes and experience of local people.

ICSs represent a significant opportunity to move closer to the Collaborative Society vision, but making the shift in thinking, culture, practice and relationships is a big challenge for leaders and organisations who are used to working in sector and organisational silos. In the run up to ICSs becoming formal bodies in April 2022, we are going to be using our years of experience supporting local cross-sector collaboration by working with many local health and care systems to:

Help health and care partnerships to understand the maturity of their local system and readiness to collaborate — using deep diagnostics and our Maturity Model for place-based health to help partnerships understand where they are now, and where they need to focus to deepen their collaboration further;

Support local leaders to develop a shared local vision for place-based health and care — co-producing a shared understanding and articulation of what local partners and communities want to achieve together, why and how;

Strengthen the foundations for local collaboration: good relationships, trust, shared principles and taking action together — through facilitating honest conversations among leaders at all levels to help people get to know each other, understand each other’s motivations and perspectives; and

Grow collaborative leadership behaviours and capabilities — through our bespoke leadership support, tailored to the specific needs and requirements of each place, equipping people with the knowledge and skills they need to mobilise for change.

This is exciting new work for us, and we are going to be busy! Our final piece of news is therefore that we are now recruiting more new team members and senior associates. Please click on the job title links if you would specifically like to apply for our positions of Consultant-Head of Practice or Project & Relationship Manager. We are delighted to be working with the BeApplied platform to facilitate a fair and inclusive recruitment process as part of our commitment to equality of opportunity and to continually diversify the perspectives and experiences of our team. Please share widely with your networks.

As always, if you are interested in working with Collaborate, or if you think we can support collaboration in your organisation or place, please get in touch!

Anna and the Collaborate team