Report published by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and supported by What Works Scotland, which reviews a series of collaborative service delivery projects designed to improve social and economic outcomes for people experiencing poverty in Glasgow.
Collaborative working occupies a central position in public policy discourse. It is presented as the medium through which complex societal issues, such as poverty, can be overcome, through utilising the expertise, knowledge and resources of multiple partners. Its prominence can also be viewed as a result of reductions in public sector spending; the consequential impact on third sector funding; and more generally, the reduced resources available to organisations which aim to support local communities across a broad range of services, for example poverty.
From November 2014 Building Connections helped develop a series of collaborative service delivery projects designed to improve social and economic outcomes for people experiencing poverty in Glasgow. Through analysing and evaluating the impact of these projects and the experiences of people delivering and engaging with them, it also sought to contribute to the evidence base on collaborative working and in particular, approaches to delivering co-located services.
The projects and their aims were:
- Springburn job centre: Improve social and economic outcomes for ethnic minority communities through delivering co-located volunteering, modern apprenticeship and employment advice in the job centre.
- Parkhead job centre partnership suite: Improve social and economic outcomes for people through co-locating financial advice, social security, mental health, lone parent, young people, employment and addictions services in the job centre.
- Deep End Advice Worker project: Improve social and economic outcomes for people accessing general practices and reduce the time medical staff spend on non-clinical issues through embedding an advice worker into two GP practices.
The report concludes that Building Connections demonstrated what can be achieved through collaborative working with multiple partners. Importantly, it improved social and economic outcomes for a significant number of people. It also acted as the catalyst for the development of relationships across the public and third sectors. On occasion, the work did not realise its full potential, however, it is clear that programmes of this nature offer both the capacity to practically support people at the current moment, but also, help build organisational relationships which offer opportunities for future collaborative working.
Download the publication
Download the report from the Glasgow Centre for Population Health website.
More details
Author: Jamie Sinclair, Building Connections Programme Manager. The Building Connections and Local Capacity programme is funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and supported by Glasgow Centre for Population Health, Glasgow Kelvin College, the NHS and What Works Scotland, this body of work is testing models of collaborative working across, and within, the public and third sectors.
Date of publication: December 2017
Publication type: Research report