Guest blogger Anthony Fisher,Team Leader in a Community Care Team and member of Scottish Collaborative Innovation Partnership Process, attempts to simplify why partnership is the way ahead and that it’s so much more than sharing office space.

Author: Anthony Fisher, Team Leader in a Community Care Team, social work student in the third sector and Scottish Collaborative Innovation Partnership Process (SCIPP) member

Date: 18 June 2015

Co-production, co-location, integration, collaboration and joined upness – words regularly used to explain partnerships. Wouldn’t it be better to say, working together?

In 2012, the Scottish Collaborative Innovation Partnership Process placed a call out to service providers and innovators to discuss and design ways of providing future care outside of hospitals. The call was answered by more than 120 organisations and representatives.

There were many projects that served as good examples of how people get together, drop egos and make things happen. North Ayrshire has social hubs, designed social centres that allow older people to come and go in a building that hosts lunch clubs, activities and social events, as well as allowing professional visiting services in a ‘one-stop shop’.

It’s all about ‘let’s do’, and ‘ask permission later’, instead of ‘can’t do’ and ‘never have’. It creates a landscape that feels nicer to work in.

Read the post on the What Works Scotland blog