What you need to know
Working together with Public and third sector services – a Partnership Agreement
Why partnership is important
Although many communities use evidence gathered about their area in their action plan to secure funds for their own community led activities, many identified needs require action from local partners - like the council, NHS, housing associations or local police. If you can agree an approach to work together your action plan priorities have a much better chance of becoming a reality.
Getting started
Make a list of the agencies and services responsible. For supporting people in your community. This could include the Council departments, the National Health Service the police or other organizations like bus companies or housing providers.
For each one note an issue for your community that is coming through in your community engagement work.
What law and policy says
Working together with communities is already an important part of the policies and laws that the Scottish public services should be implementing. Here are a few examples of this
The Community Empowerment Act – which encourages community led regeneration and participation in how services are designed and delivered.
The Planning Scotland Act – Which provides rights for communities to set their priorities for what happens on land and in buildings where they live.
The Place Principle – Which requires all public services to work with each other and with communities to work in a much more localized way to deliver services.
The NHS Quality Framework for Community Engagement
Children’s Services and Criminal Justice plans – which are examples of where particular services have duties to involve communities in planning what they do.
Community action Plans are also being seen as much more important democratic expressions of community needs and aspirations in the Local Governance Review . So, a partnership agreement could help link these duties and policy requirements to support community participation with ideas from your plans into shared commitments. These wont be a legal document or a contract, but it could be a clear, plain-English understanding of who will do what, and how you’ll work together and how together you can deliver better results.
What could be in an agreement?
An agreement could describe your shared priorities, the contributions each partner will make, and a basic timeline for working on things in the plan. It should also set out how you’ll communicate and when you’ll review progress. It should cover needs that have been raised in your plan such as:
Sharing responsibility for long-term change
Improving local spaces or facilities
Enhancing services (e.g. transport, youth work, health and wellbeing)
Supporting events, programmes, or capacity building
Accessing data about your area, advice, or funding
What should be in an agreement?
An overall agreement, or series of agreements with individual partners, should be more than just verbal commitments. These might be expressed in e-mails or formal correspondence or in a more overarching collective partnership agreement.
Ideally, it should also be clear and visible in the CAP/LPP, either:
in the plan itself as priorities and actions are finalized.
or in a separate implementation plan for your CAP/LPP produced soon after your plan is produced.
A simple written agreement could then provide:
A basis for collaboration
Description of shared expectations
Clarity about who is doing what
A record of commitments
A foundation for accountability and trust
Whatever of these best suits local circumstances, if possible, secure agreement in principle to support you plan as early as possible.
Partnership planning Exercise
Before meeting your partners, think about what you’re asking for — and what your community brings in return. The process should emphasis co-operation to deliver the best results for your community. It should be a flexible and might involve starting with the easier things to achieve to build trust and grow the partnership over time.
Use the list you developed earlier of organisations you want to involve and what you need from them.
Draft a letter or e-mail and send this to the organizations you need to support for your local action planning process. Ask them to commit in principle to future planning of their services using information which arises from the action plan.
Produce an agenda for a meeting with these agencies to discuss how they might respond to your plan once it has been produced.
Agreeing shared priorities with partners
It is unlikely the public and third sector services will be in a position to agree to deliver everything identified in a Community Action plan. This is because they have limited funds and need to focus on meeting their own service priorities, such as for schools, cleansing, policing or social work. However they should be willing to discuss
How these statutory responsibilities are being delivered locally with a view to improving effectiveness.
Areas of more discretionary spending for regeneration where they have more choice where and how to spend..
A good plan based on sound engagement creates a solid picture of what needs to be done in an area. So is perfectly reasonable for representative community organizations to identify the priorities and who could take responsibility for meeting these priorities. Services will often have some plans to deliver action locally on the issues you see as import, so it makes sense early in your dialogue to ask them:
Which priorities in the action plan do they see as fully or partially your responsibility?
What are you already doing to respond to these local needs and what resources are you currently committing?
What plans do you have to address any of these priorities in the next five years. What resources are you planning to commit or are you seeking?
Which issues Do you think would benefit from joint public and third sector service /community Action?
Which issues do you think are solely the responsibility of the community?
How can we work together with you to improve the lives of people in our community?
Formal recognition of your plan
If you can it is a good idea to try to get public commitments from you partners You could either do this through individual correspondence with officers in partner or by seeking some form of collective agreement, perhaps involving your elected members like MSPs or Councillors. This could also help to build local confidence that the action plan will be able, to make a difference.
Here are some suggested statements that could be included in draft agreement
That the action plan for this area is recognized by the community and the public and third sector agencies listed and appendix one
We recognise that the plan has been produced by accountable represent local organisations and that its content represents what local people have identified as important in the area
We have agreed to work together on delivering the priorities in the action plan wherever possible and practical
That we will be involved with the community and local services in reviewing the implementation of the plan and taking any other action agreed as necessary and reasonable within our resources
We will work together across sectors to seek resources together for the implementation of this plan
Agreeing practical actions
Its import to be as specific as possible in looking at more detailed priorities. Most actions plans achieve this for community led actions and many also contain actions for public or other third sector service partners.