In this topic, we will discuss the ways in which you and your organisation can benefit from working collaboratively and how it can work to improve your services to clients.
By the end of this topic, you will understand:
- The benefits and challenges of networking and collaboration
- How collaboration can support clients in community services
- When and how to collaborate
- How to review a collaborative arrangement.
Every organisation has its limits, whether they are set by the mission, vision and values of the organisation, or are limiting factors such as expertise, budget and location.
Every organisation has its limits, whether they are set by the mission, vision and values of the organisation, or are limiting factors such as expertise, budget and location. There may be times when your organisation alone cannot provide for the needs of clients. Being able to reach out to other organisations to provide additional services and expertise can improve the outcomes for your clients, improve productivity and reduce duplication and costs for the organisation.
Person-Centred Approach
Most community services organisations use a person-centred approach to providing support to individuals and groups of people. This approach means placing the person who is receiving services at the centre of all the thinking, planning and decision making that occurs related to their needs and goals.
A collaborative approach means organisations are able to adopt a person-centred approach by liaising with other organisations, accessing expertise from professionals outside their own organisation and working together to provide support. For example, you could call an outreach worker to see if they have availability for supports for a client, or you could join in an inter-agency network meeting to discuss new approaches and shared resourcing and approaches across an area.
There are many benefits that can occur from collaboration and networking in community services work:
| For the client | For workers and team members | For the organisation |
|---|---|---|
| Access to specialised support | Sharing of responsibilities | Ability to diversify and broaden the range of services offered to clients and across locations and sites |
| Braoder range of services and service provision | Ability to share ideas, brainstorm, solve problems and reflect on experience | Wider range of skill sets within the organisation |
| Timely intervention and follow up | Support for others in the work team | Enhanced capacity to achieve goal and align work with strategic direction or the organisation |
Watch
Watch this YouTube video called ‘A Day in the Life of a Child Protection Worker in Bunbury’ by Department of Communities and think about the benefits for the worker and the client from being part of a team. [3:05 minutes]
Think
What are the pros and cons of working collaboratively in a community services role?
Consider the benefits and challenges that could occur when you are working with:
- An individual client
- A group of people
- A work team
- People from other agencies or organisations
Activity
Person-Centred Approach Spider¬Diagram
A person-centred approach is fundamental to the work you will do in community services. Often, individual workers and work teams will collaborate to help meet the needs of individuals more effectively.
In this activity, you will make a spider diagram, recording your ideas about how to work collaboratively with other people in a personcentred approach. Complete the spider diagram below to show your ideas about how you could work collaboratively to meet the needs of a client.
For example, you could write:
- Names of support services
- Types of professionals (intake worker, case worker, OT, AOD worker)
- Types of interventions (in home support, outreach, group work)
- Ways of working together (meetings, phone hook ups, case conferences)
Working with Others
Working with other organisations can:
- Improve coordination of services through coordination across agencies, giving clients improved pathways or referral systems.
- Promoting the sharing of resources can provide improved access to supplementary resources and may reduce costs related to things like office space or administration staff.
- Provide strength in numbers – working collaboratively and with industry bodies can provide access to strong political lobbying.
- Promote better organisational efficiency and reduce duplicated effort – for example, integrated service models can achieve larger geographic coverage or reduce costs to each organisation.
- Enhance organisational knowledge and improve individual and organisational capability through networking and professional development.
- Create greater access to current information, recognition of emerging trends, new ideas and strategic thinking.
- Promote a holistic method of fulfilling client needs through improved access to a range of services that can meet their needs, and continuity and agility of services to adjust to their needs.
- Lead to innovations that can assist organisations to be proactive in a shifting world of work, changing operations and operational environments.
- Encourage organisations to be more responsive in meeting emerging or complex client needs.
- Increase the likelihood of successfully applying for tenders or expressions of interest to deliver projects.
- Increase the capability of working to industry best practices or even leading the way.
It is important to consider the potential drawbacks which can affect collaborative arrangements in community services.
Drawbacks can be associated with individual clients and workers, as well as with agencies and formal partnership arrangements.
Individual Drawbacks
Collaboration can be time-consuming. In a community services context, workers are often pushed for time and need to account for the hours they spend on providing services to each client. They need to ensure they are delivering services in a cost-effective and time-effective manner. This can cause challenges when working in a collaborative way, because it takes time to discuss, plan, agree and document your own actions and those of others in your team or group.
Who leads?
The possibility of working as a ‘second string’ partner in a collaboration can create tensions which leads to resentment, disorganisation and conflict. This can be avoided by distributing responsibilities evenly, and by having strong agreements in place that clearly delineate and define roles and responsibilities.
Working styles
Everybody has different working styles. On the other hand, organisationally, groups can sometimes fall into situation where everyone has a similar work style. When this is challenged or interrupted by working with new people or different organisations it can cause stress and disharmony. This can be worked through with strong leadership and open and honest communication.
Think
How would you describe your own work style? What effect do you think your work style might have on your ability to collaborate with others in an organisation?
Too Many Cooks
Working in collaboration might mean that projects move slowly because you need consensus, or to check decisions with the other organisation. It is important to agree on clearly defined levels of autonomy.
Conflict
There may be conflict between organisational positions on certain topics or actions. This can be avoided by thoroughly examining the goals and strategies of potential partners to ensure that they are a match and ensuring that any agreements made about collaborating do not restrict normal practice within organisations.
Personal conflicts can also arise as organisations go through changes in group dynamics and roles within the projects they are collaborating on. Any working group tends to go through stages as they come together to achieve a common goal.
Organisations, managers and leaders should be aware of the stages of team development and implement appropriate strategies to minimise negative impacts.
These stages are:
The best time to collaborate is when you have identified a lack or gap in the services that you provide to your clients and can see the potential for benefits for the organisation and the clients by working with another closely aligned organisation who can provide those services that your organisation does not have the skills, knowledge or finnancial capacity to offers. It is good practice to collaborate instead of duplicating existing services, especially when the other organisation is a leader in their field or has a reputation for excellence in service provision and client satisfaction.
The decision to investigate the potential collaboration is made by upper management, chief executives and board members or trustees, who will then undertake a risk benefit analysis. They will have the knowledge and experience to examine the pros and cons of the undertaking and determine the scope and responsibilities of the collaborative effort. There are also complex legal issues regarding responsibilities for reporting, intellectual property, copyright and conflict resolution that may need to be considered, which are best put into the hands of those with expertise.
If you find a potential for collaboration, and you want to make a case for it, you first need to do some groundwork.
1. Research the gaps or the lack services available to your clients int he community |
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2. Identify where there are gaps or lack of services available to your clients within your organisation |
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3. Explore how other organisations are provifing for these needs |
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4. Find out all there is to know about the organisation to see if they are switchable |
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5. Then you can approach management with a proposal |
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Setting the Ground Rules
Whether the collaboration is informal or formal, it is important that all parties have a clear understanding of the scope, responsibilities and structure of the partnership.
Understanding the scope of the project – that is, what will and will not be included in the undertaking and having defined parameters for the project – is vital to reducing misunderstandings, miscommunications, conflict, the likelihood of something being left undone, and scope creep (losing sight of the original project agreement).
Clearly defined roles and responsibilities are a must to ensure that everything is done according to the agreement, so that the needs of clients are met, reporting and acquittal of funding occurs, and the likelihood of interpersonal conflict and conflict of purpose is reduced.
Having timeframes and ensuring that everyone is aware of them ensures timely responses to client needs and makes it less likely that critical points in procedures occur.
Communication is critical to successful collaboration. It is important to have regular meetings, use internet facilities such as email, message boards or social media to keep information current and up to date, and have clear reporting structures. This will help maintain healthy and productive relationships, keep projects on track and identify any emerging issues early so that they are dealt with before they become problems.
Putting it in Writing
It is always best practice to have everything in writing before beginning to work together. To do this, organisations often create a memorandum of understanding (MOU) or a contract. Using this documentation to set the ground rules as mentioned above will help the collaborative effort to run smoothly.
Read
Read the page about MOUs on the Not-for-profit Law to gain an understanding of how MOUs can work in the context of community services work: ‘Memoranda of Understanding’
As with any project, reviewing and monitoring plays a key role in ensuring that collaborative partnerships are working for all parties and achieving the desired goals and outcomes.
Strategies and timeframes for regular progress reporting should be part of the MOU or contract conditions. Reporting on complaints and feedback and how to respond should also be scheduled.
All stakeholders, especially clients and the staff who have to deliver on the project, should be asked to contribute feedback, for example, through qualitative surveys. Staff should be provided with the opportunity to provide feedback through normal workplace channels and should be encouraged to use them.
The following list of questions are a good place to start from when reviewing your partnership:
Is your partnership achieving its objectives?NCVO
• Are you achieving more by working collaboratively than by working alone?
• What has gone well? What has gone less well?
• Has your partnership or its activities changed since it began – do you need to adjust how you work together?
• Do all the partners still have shared aims?
Where the answers to any of these questions are problematic, the partners should work together to put the project back on track.
Making Recommendations
Once you have reviewed a collaborative arrangement, you need to make recommendations about the best actions to take. Consider the questions previously mentioned. Decide if the collaboration is still meeting the needs of clients, workers and the organisations involved.
If it is, the arrangement can continue, and the actions required are simply to ensure that documentation and goals are current and that legal structures and business arrangements are up to date.
If the collaboration is no longer meeting the needs of clients, workers and the organisations involved, it is time to make some recommendations for change. This could include:
- Identifying the existing strengths of the arrangement
- Identifying new areas of need or changing goals
- Considering current best practice principles in the community services sector
- Accessing alternative funding or in-kind support from funding bodies
- Meeting with key stakeholders to determine the need for a new or alternative collaborative arrangement.
Case Study
Marietta works as a team leader for a team providing mental health outreach support to young people. Her team has been working collaboratively with another agency that specialises in youth justice programs. Marietta’s team have identified significant gaps in the services they are currently offering and believe the partnership with the youth justice agency is no longer operating effectively. The goals of the two agencies no longer align and there are increasing numbers of clients who are being denied services because they do not meet the eligibility criteria established in the initial program guidelines.
Marietta works with her team and drafts a letter of recommendation that she provides to her CEO.
The letter recommends that the partnership with the youth justice agency be discontinued when the MOU expires at the end of the year. She also recommends that their own team focuses its attention on collaborating with the local community more closely to better align their services to meet the needs of the individuals they serve.
