It has never been more important for organisations to work together. Joint working can take many forms; groups may come together to share information, to use resources more effectively, to respond to funding and commissioning opportunities that are beyond a single organisation, to deliver a better service to clients or to respond to funding cuts. Joint working can take place across sectors and between large and small organisations.

However joint working can be a challenging and complex process. There are different levels of joint working from networking to partnership and at higher levels there is more shared risk and greater trust is required. Organisations working together can sometimes have different expectations and perceptions of the relationship. There are great benefits for groups thinking of working together to take time at the outset to explore things like mutual expectations, the level of investment and commitment, the values base and how disputes might be handled before.

We can help with this process whether it is a large group of agencies wanting to network, or groups wanting to work across sectors or a couple of organisations wanting to work more closely and/or move towards merger. We bring a lot experience to such work and tools such as our joint working checklist and a joint working continuum. As a Chief Officer, Wynne has; worked with consortia of voluntary infrastructure organisations which included leading the design of a new regional model; led the development of a cross sector health and social care commissioning model and worked in a cross sector regeneration partnership. The latter work won a Secretary of State’s Partnership award.

Two examples of recent Red Gem work are;

We worked with a network of advice agencies to help them work together to respond to reduced funding and a potential scenario of a single funding contract. We worked with the group to identify some shared principles and values and a vision of what the service might look like in the future taking into account the needs of users and funders.

We worked with two organisations that delivered complementary services and to some degree shared a client base. They wanted to work more closely together to improve their service to clients and we worked together to identify the benefits, the threats and what needed to happen to make it work including engagement across both organisations. We then put this into an action plan with timescales. The result was very successful and highlighted by Capacitybuilders. One of the Chief Officers involved said, “We worked with Redgem as part of a collaborative project with another agency. I was very impressed with Wynne and liked the style he used to conduct the sessions we had with him. He enabled us to work effectively and efficiently within a tight timescale and his inclusive style made us feel central to the process at all times.”