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Abstract
Outline
The need for health and social care agencies and their professionals to work in partnership
is a central component of contemporary English health and social care policy. As in
many other countries, partnership is predicated on the notion that this way of working
improves services and outcomes for service users. However, as there is little evidence
that partnerships improve service user outcomes some commentators suggest that this
indicates either a failure of the policy or a deficit in terms of implementation.
The aim of this thesis was to investigate the link between English health and social
care partnerships and service user outcomes. Rather than adopting the types of rationalist
and instrumental approach which the majority of studies in this field have done, the
thesis develops a new conceptual framework for partnership which is interpretive and
performative.
Introduction
Partnerships take a number of different forms and do not constitute a particular model
of care. Some of the more theoretical discussions around partnership involve debate
over whether partnerships are synonymous with a particular mode of governance (i.e.,
network, hierarchy or market). However, in practice partnership has been implemented
as all of these different modes and through a range of different means. The one commonality
is that health and social care partnership are conceptualised as instrumental tools
of improvement, introduced in order to bring about positive changes to service user
outcomes. Yet, an analysis of the policy context indicates that there are a range
of reasons that partnerships might be introduced, beyond simply being a means to bring
about better service user outcomes. The thesis identifies four dominant ‘frames' that
seek to explain why it is that health and social care partnerships exist and what
it is that they should achieve (see Table 1). Although central government has predominantly
cited improved service user outcomes as the motivation of these frames, this does
not appear to be a central driver of any of these frames suggesting that service user
outcomes are therefore not the sole driver of partnerships. This may also go some
way to explaining why there is a lack of empirical evidence linking partnerships and
service user outcomes.
This thesis argues that the power of partnership is not as an instrumental mode of
improvement, but instead in terms of its symbolic and cultural power. A new conceptual
framework of partnership was constructed that is interpretive and performative in
nature. This framework is developed and tested with four exploratory care study sites
in the thesis. Data was collected using the Partnership Outcomes Evaluation Toolkit
(POET), an evaluation framework that was designed specifically for this thesis [1].
Results/findings
The findings of this study conclude that partnership is not necessarily simply an
instrument of improvement in a traditional sense. Although all of the partnerships
involved in the research claimed to be driven by the aim of improving service user
outcomes, the observations made in the thesis suggest that their local enactment was
rather different. It appeared that there were other factors driving local changes
that were not being explicitly articulated. Partnership was being used as a means
of framing a series of changes and engaging a variety of stakeholders towards some
specific local changes, and actions that might otherwise have been resisted. The power
of partnership therefore lies in its cultural and symbolic value. This takes partnership
beyond traditional discussions of partnership and governance; rather than representing
a particular mode of governance, instead arguing that partnership is an active tool
of governance.
Implications for integrated care
For the readers of the IJIC it is of special interest to learn that the impacts of
integrated care are more extensive than simply in terms of efficiency or organisational
effectiveness. In England, notions of partnership and its implications extend beyond
service improvement processes to include notions of politics and power in the reform
of health care. It may be of interest to compare these findings across other countries
and other service areas.
The results presented in this review are based on the author’s thesis presented at
the University of Birmingham in December 2010.
Further articles by this author in the International Journal of Integrated Care
Glasby J, Dickinson H, Miller R. Partnership working in England—where are we now and
where have we come from? International Journal of Integrated Care [serial online]
2011, forthcoming.
Dickinson H. Is leading and managing in inter-agency settings really that different?
International Journal of Integrated Care 2009 Sept 16; 9. Available from: http://www.ijic.org/.
URN:NBN:NL:UI:10-1-100562.
Glasby J, Dickinson H. Greater than the sum of our parts? Emerging lessons for UK
health and social care. International Journal of Integrated Care [serial online] 2008
Aug 20; 8. Available from: http://www.ijic.org/. URN:NBN:NL:UI:10-1-100488.