Healthier Greenwich Partnership

We have moved into a space of dialog. Our agenda is centred around items that we can influence and control, and we are clear on what’s coming down from the system as information and things we cannot control.

Sarah McClinton, Place Executive Director, and Director of Health and Adult Services, Royal Borough of Greenwich

About the partnership

1. We are made up of organisations and individuals who live, work and learn in Greenwich. We work together to enable high quality health and care outcomes in our local area. We do this by: recognising and sharing where people are having really different experiences of health and care in our local community, and understanding how we can all cooperate to be and stay as well as possible for as long as possible.
2. The partnership is a strong platform for building relationships and includes a mixture of longstanding and newer colleagues, which contributes to an inclusive space for creative and diverse ideas, as well as outcomes.

What has gone well

1. Partnership working during the pandemic response strengthened cross-agency relationships, encouraged honest sharing of organisational challenges, and generated goodwill for future collaboration.
2. Clinical and care professional input to the priority delivery programmes, which is essential to their success. This will help residents to get the help they need when they need it.
3. Community hubs brought everyone around the table, including VCSEs, and expanded MDT working at a local level.​

Challenges experienced and overcome

1. Bringing together organisations with different cultures / ways of working.
2. Team morale and supporting staff to maintain a good work-life balance.
3. Financial structures so far not yet effective in tackling inequalities.
4. Funding tied up in pre-existing contracts or at system level, which makes it hard to understand what is available for change and innovation locally.
5. Thinking outside professional perspectives and beyond workforce demands.
6. Working well together while also having the necessary and difficult conversations.

Results

1. Agreement of shared purpose, and priorities across all partners.
2. Sensible and flexible working relationships, with agreed values and behaviours.
3. Closer and earlier working relationships with our VCSEs.

What made the difference

1. Action mindset: there is a leadership with broad objectives, big scope and a willingness and desire to act; there is a shared understanding of priorities and inclusive tone to the system conversation. Rhetoric conversations become plans that deliver changes in the system.
2. Kaleidoscope’s eight characteristics of high performing collaboration: including the deliberate cultivation of trust and generosity and leaders who actively span boundaries.
3. Good infrastructure for economic development and labour : Greenwich Local Labour and Business (the council’s employment and skills service) and hospital anchor institute.
4. Learning from covid captured and embedded: including understanding of pre-COVID barriers and how we overcame them.
5. More joint working, joint roles and joint accountability: a greater sharing of resources and development of shared plans, strategies and key priorities.
6. Rich data and analysis informed the overall partnership thinking at a service level.