The Benefits of Collaboration

Date of the event: 27th October + 3rd November 2009
Organised by: Target: Wellbeing & GMCVO
Venue: St.Thomas Centre, Manchester
Reported by: Rob Squires, Network Co-ordinator (Third Sector)

For some time now I have been touting the benefits of the national Collaboration programme of support offered by bassac, which includes free training and support from consultants. For many Target: Wellbeing projects, collaborative working may prove to be an important aspect of their exit strategies from the current BIG Lottery funding, whether this be through more joined up and comprehensive services, funding bids, or collaborative contracts from funders. In light of this, I arranged for Morag Rose from Greater manchester Council For Voluntary Services, to deliver the two day bassac Collaborative Benefits training.

The aim of the training was to give participants a good grounding in all things to do with collaboration, but also where possible, to establish collaboration 'champions' who can go on to stimulate and catalyse increased collaboration in their Target: Wellbeing programmes. To that end the training was well attended by 13 people from Target: Wellbeing projects or programmes.

The feedback from the trainig was generally very positive, with many participants reporting that they plan to think hard about how they can strengthen the collaborations that are happening with their projects and programmes. One outcome of this is that the Knowsley Programme leads (Mary Farrell and Shirley King) have arranged for Anne Harpur, who is a bassac consultant, to attend their next meeting in December, and facilitate a three hour collaborative planning workshop. The workshop will involve Target: Wellbeing projects, plus other 3rd sector providers in the area, and will look at collaborative possibilities for the future. It will be very interesting to see what comes out of this workshop, as Knowsley may well be showing the way for similar positive developments in other programme areas.

Another interesting aspect of the training was that Niel Walbrum from GMCVO provided a presentation on the work he is doing to establish a large consortium of commissioning ready third sector providers, for the Greater Manchester sub region. The thinking is that through establishing the consortium, members will be in a position to respond rapidly, and successfully to health and wellbeing commissioning contracts in the 9 boroughs as and when they become available. This is an interesting model that I am looking at, which Target: Wellbeing and its various programmes may be able to learn from, in relation to future collaboration.