Aberdeenshire Collaborative Learning Day report published

What Works Scotland has published a report from a Collaborative Learning Day in Aberdeenshire looking at ‘what does it mean to put Christie into action?’

The Learning Day, co-hosted and facilitated by What Works Scotland (WWS) and the Aberdeenshire Community Planning Partnership, brought together around 40 people from community organisations in Aberdeenshire and from WWS.

Participants from the Aberdeenshire Community Planning Partnership, Aberdeenshire Health and Social Care Partnership and local third/community sectors, shared their experiences about the delivery of public services in the context of the Christie Commission review.

During the event, held on held on 8 December 2015, they discussed effective partnership working, community participation and preventing inequality.

The event report was written by WWS research associate James Henderson and Co-director Nick Bland, who both work with the Aberdeenshire Community Planning Partnership through the WWS Collaborative Action Research workstream.

It summarises the key points of the discussions, the experiences shared by the participants, and their thoughts, aspirations and challenges so far on ‘putting Christie into action’.

“The need to work at a steady, patient pace that could support suitable culture change was highlighted and, crucially too, the need and challenge to shift from positive aspirations – generated by discussions of ‘Christie’ – towards ‘the how’ of actually doing this complex partnership-working.”

The report highlights the complexities people are experiencing in taking forward the aspirations of the Christie report and the existing ‘pool’ of knowledge and commitment in Aberdeenshire organisations.

The Learning Day participants contributed their knowledge, experience and understanding to the report and members of the ‘community capacity-building’ Inquiry Team – or Partnership Innovation Team (PIT) – in Aberdeenshire gave valuable feedback on an early draft.

Next steps

The report points to some areas for potential future work involving the participants, including:

Using this scoping report as part of ‘preparing the ground’ by raising initial questions and providing challenges
Considering prevention and tackling inequalities
Locating opportunities for ‘conversations’, inquiries and shared learning
Drawing on specialist knowledge and resources

As part of a developing approach, What Works Scotland will be in touch with everyone who came to the Learning Day to find out more about their experiences of community planning, health and social care integration and third/community sector working.

We would also be very interested to hear about other action inquiry work within Aberdeenshire.