New Labour and capacity building

In 2003 the New Labour Government reaffirmed its views on capacity building between public and voluntary organisations as being about having ‘The right organisation, systems, partnerships, people and processes to deliver against a particular agenda or plan’ (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister 2003, 8). Initial programmes to build capacity in both local government and third-sector organisations were targeted at internal organisational and workforce performance (Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) 2008). In 2006, the Office for the Third Sector was set up to support the activities of third-sector organisations that included voluntary or community groups, social enterprises, charities, co-operatives and mutuals.

However, the government recognised that strengthening the internal capacity of organisations was not sufficient to ensure that local authorities and third-sector organisations would be able to work together effectively to deal with complex social problems that required collective action at the local level. For example, Healy (Reference Healy1998) had differentiated between communities that are well connected, good at getting access to needed funds and supported by influential people, and communities that are fragmented and not well connected and therefore less likely to be supported by influential people and able to get access to needed funds. Meanwhile, Putnam's (Reference Putnam2000) concept of social capital showed how communities with extensive networks and relations with a range of organisations and individuals stand a better chance of obtaining the resources needed to make their neighbourhood a good place to live. In 2004 the government-sponsored Civil Renewal Unit launched the Firm Foundations initiative (Civil Renewal Unit 2004) that set out a framework for capacity building at the local level that would help to address the problem of fragmented and poorly connected communities. There was an emphasis on finding ways to build the types of social capital that would mean more communities were able to get access to the resources they needed to deal with problems at the local level. The importance of social capital was reaffirmed in the 2008 White Paper Communities in Control: Real People, Real Power, that proclaimed ‘Strong social networks, good community spirit and a local sense of belonging and place, are foundations for confident and healthy communities’ (DCLG 2008, 21).

Diamond and Liddle (Reference Diamond and Liddle2005) describe ten dimensions needed to assure community capacity: leadership, values, understanding community history, sense of community, community power, citizen participation, skills, networks, resources and critical reflection. But the tension and conflict that can arise within the process of community capacity building show how it is itself a contested process. For example, Diamond (Reference Diamond2008) has argued that bringing together community groups and outside experts with a limited understanding of local issues can be problematic if the procedure is not well thought through. There are also concerns about whether different stakeholders are able to understand each other's perspectives and work together to achieve mutually desired goals (DCLG 2008; Hudson and Hardy Reference Hudson, Hardy and Glendinning2002; Willis Reference Willis, Rigg and Richards2006). Meanwhile, there is the ‘Expertise that citizens and service users have to contribute to the formulation of policy and the design and delivery of services’ (Barnes et al. Reference Barnes, Skelcher, Beirens, Dalziel, Jeffares and Wilson2008, 2) through, for example, participation in relevant partnerships at the local level. The White Paper Communities in Control: Real People, Real Power (DCLG 2008) and the White Paper Our Health, Our Care, Our Say: A New Direction for Community Services (Department of Health 2006) both emphasised the importance of a shift in culture and resources to ensure greater involvement of a range of people in the design, commissioning and evaluation of services that are delivered in a joined up way by partnership organisations. This policy shift was also enshrined in the Public Service Agreements (PSAs) that set out key outcomes for the government in its Comprehensive Spending Review for the period 2008–2011. However, the extent to which community capacity building has enabled citizens to use their skills and experiences to engage effectively with other stakeholders as opposed to merely lending legitimacy to their actions is open to challenge (King and Cruickshank Reference King and Cruickshank2010).

Partnerships, collaboration and capacity building

Theory on partnerships and collaboration underpinned the theoretical framework that was constructed to interrogate LAP pilot evaluation reports for the purposes of the study reported in this paper. The intention was to assess how capacity building through collaborative working might help to empower older people by involving them in decisions about the services needed to meet their needs, while also enabling them to live independently as active citizens for as long as possible. The form that partnerships or collaborations take can range from, ‘wide networks through loose alliances and tight federations to the creation of novel organizational entities’ (Cropper Reference Cropper and Huxham1996, 82). They often stem from interdependencies that exist between autonomous organisations (Gray Reference Gray1985; Logsdon Reference Logsdon1991). More specifically, voluntary and community organisations often work together to represent the views of marginalised or excluded groups in different debates and decision-making processes (Durose and Lowndes Reference Durose and Lowndes2010; Lowndes and Sullivan Reference Lowndes and Sullivan2004). Different organisations can come together to develop shared structures, rules and norms for decision-making and action (Wood and Gray Reference Wood and Gray1991) and obtain more control over the environment within which they are located and operate (Astley Reference Astley1984). Partner organisations can gain a better understanding of each other's views on relevant issues, learn from one another and search for solutions to problems that extend beyond their own limited vision of what might be possible (Gray and Wood Reference Gray and Wood1991; Sowa Reference Sowa2009). In turn, partner organisations can agree shared priorities for action to deal with problems and manage conflict over policies or resources (Fredericksen Reference Fredericksen1996) and achieve more by collaborating or working together than they can working alone (Huxham and Vangen Reference Huxham and Vangen2005, Reference Huxham, Vangen and Osborne2009).

Achieving collaborative advantage

Chris Huxham has investigated the capacity that organisations have to collaborate or work together and how the process might help to ensure important resources are used more effectively and efficiently. By combining resources, organisations can create ‘synergy’ or a collective capacity and way of working that helps them to avoid some of the pitfalls associated with excessive insularity and individualism (Huxham Reference Huxham1993a; Huxham and Vangen Reference Huxham and Vangen2005, Reference Huxham, Vangen and Osborne2009). For example, organisations working in isolation from each other may forego important learning opportunities and different ways of thinking about how to produce goods or provide services. At the same time, ‘synergy’ between organisations can increase their capacity to achieve collaborative advantage. When collaborative advantage occurs, ‘Something unusually creative is produced – perhaps an objective is met that no organization could have produced on its own when each organization, through the collaboration, is able to achieve its own objectives better than it could alone’ (Huxham Reference Huxham1993b, 603). From the outset the capacity of a partnership or collaboration to create ‘synergy’ and achieve collaborative advantage will depend much on different organisations being able to identify clear reasons for wanting to work together (Eden and Huxham Reference Eden and Huxham2001). Successful collaboration also depends on the extent to which partner organisations are able to develop shared goals and ways of communicating (Huxham and Vangen Reference Huxham and Vangen1996, Reference Huxham, Vangen and Osborne2009) that help them to find mutually desired solutions to problems (Huxham Reference Huxham2003).

Managers' negotiating skills, their commitment to sharing resources and ideas, and how they involve individuals in relevant discussions, will also substantially influence the chances of organisations finding mutually useful ways of working together (Lasker, Weiss and Miller Reference Lasker, Weiss and Miller2001). Moreover, it is necessary to avoid collaborative inertia or unexpected poor partnership performance where ‘The output from a collaborative arrangement is negligible, the rate of output is extremely slow, or stories of pain and hard grind are integral to successes achieved’ (Huxham and Vangen Reference Huxham and Vangen2004, 191). Theory therefore suggests that various factors contribute to the achievement of collaborative advantage and the onset of collaborative inertia (Table 1).

Table 1.

Factors contributing to organisations achieving collaborative advantage and avoiding collaborative inertia

Source: Based on Huxham (Reference Huxham1993b).

An examination of what partnerships do in practice might show how partner organisations find ways to agree on aims, share resources, build trust in each other and develop a commitment to working together that makes the achievement of collaborative advantage more likely. Alternatively, the results of the examination might show how differences in organisational culture, values and mission can cause collaborative inertia and what if anything can be done to resolve the situation. Huxham (Reference Huxham and Huxham1996) has produced a framework consisting of eight dimensions, each describing elements of partnership working that can complement or conflict with each other. The framework provides an interconnected set of contrasts or dimensions of partnerships used to improve understanding of their purpose. The two dimensions that describe instrumental collaboration and ideological collaboration are of particular interest in examining how partnerships might help to improve existing services or the development of genuinely new and innovative services (Table 2).

Table 2.

A description of instrumental and ideological collaboration

Source: Based on Huxham (Reference Huxham2000).

Whatever form partnership or collaborative working takes, there is an instrumental aspect to effecting task-based change and the achievement of some type of practical outcome and an ideological aspect to changing culture, values and relationships of power. However, in different situations partnerships can empower weaker organisations and help them to achieve their objectives, or increase the power of stronger organisations and help them to achieve their objectives.

Ultimately, the term partnership is not a neutral concept because the meanings assigned to it are, in part, a product of the exercise of power that structures a particular language of partnership working (Atkinson Reference Atkinson1999). Organisations need to occupy a legitimate position within a larger discursive arena and only a limited number of positions are perceived as legitimate at any given time (Hardy, Lawrence and Grant Reference Hardy, Lawrence and Grant2005). Organisations may make choices under one set of circumstances that are very different from the choices that they would make under another set (Immergut Reference Immergut1998). If the objective is to gain the trust of local communities, then the circumstances need to provide adequate opportunities for difference and diversity within partnerships to ensure local problems and priorities are effectively addressed (Lowndes and Sullivan Reference Lowndes and Sullivan2004). The ideas relating to collaborative advantage and inertia and instrumental versus ideological collaboration provided an underpinning framework that was used to examine partnerships between local authorities, third-sector organisations and older people in the LAP pilots.

Better use of existing services for older people

Considerable evidence was found of the factors that facilitate effective partnership working as described by Huxham (Reference Huxham1993b) and Huxham and Vangen (Reference Huxham and Vangen2005, Reference Huxham, Vangen and Osborne2009), including an ability to get things on to relevant agendas, take part in inter-organisational discussions, develop partnership capacity that facilitates joint learning, and find better ways to work together to meet older people's needs. Such partnership working builds capacity when key staff from statutory and third-sector organisations are able to improve their knowledge and skills in the use of existing resources to achieve better service and quality of life outcomes for older people. Learning on the job, through day-to-day interaction with older people and colleagues in partner organisations, was an integral feature of all eight LAP pilot approaches. However, there was limited evidence of specific knowledge and skills training, particularly for staff in third-sector organisations, or of work directly involving the private sector.

An example of work specifically targeted at knowledge and skills development was the Leeds capacity-building grants, which benefited 58 third-sector organisations, including nine black and minority ethnic (BME) groups. The grants were used to invest in leadership and other types of skills training, equipment, planning and volunteer recruitment; to establish the role of older people as ‘peer mentors’; to purchase screen-reading software for blind Asian people; and to set up a website. The majority of the grants were spent on improving third-sector infrastructure but less than a third went directly to community-based organisations.

All of the LAP pilots sought to build capacity by working in partnership with other organisations to ensure older people were able to access understandable, reliable and locally available information and advice, and then be referred to services where appropriate. For example, the Salford LAP pilot created a specialist signposting service to provide older people with housing advice and help them make informed and sustainable housing choices. Salford's Corporate Customer Contact Centre used a database of residents to identify callers as being eligible for specific services provided by a network of partner organisations. These partner organisations were more connected in terms of being able to communicate with each other and avoid the duplication of the advice or help provided for older people. The Age Concern organisation in the city felt that the network was also a positive way to expand ‘The means through which people might engage with service providers’ (Johnson, Wiggan and Kawalek Reference Johnson, Wiggan and Kawalek2008, 24). This appeared to replicate the successful partnership working that Huxham (Reference Huxham1993a) has described and others (Andrews and Entwistle Reference Andrews and Entwistle2010; Bovaird and Tizard Reference Bovaird, Tizard, Bovaird and Loffler2009; Milbourne Reference Milbourne2009) have elaborated on where organisations improve their understanding of each other's work, avoid duplicating actions and activities, and recognise opportunities to build the capacity needed to achieve mutually desired objectives. To some extent the service was a victim of its own success since the popularity of, and consequent demands on, the new housing service were underestimated, causing some lengthy waiting times for help.

Other examples of capacity building included the Lancaster Care Navigator Service, which was delivered by the city council in partnership with a third-sector provider and run mostly by volunteers. As well as making referrals to partner organisations, the service also provided support and co-ordinated the arrangement of relevant care services for older people. The Devon pilot introduced a 360° wellbeing assessment tool called ‘Getting the Most Out of Life’. This tool aimed to assist with maintaining a coherent assessment framework, regardless of referral source or presenting problem, that would help to provide older people with access to information and services that enabled them to maintain an active and involved lifestyle. In addition to the straightforward provision of reliable and understandable information and advice, most of the LAP pilots sought to improve staff and older people's understanding about who offers what service. One part of Gateshead's Link-up project involved organisations working together to find better ways to deal with older people's concerns. Underpinning Link-up was a desire to co-locate useful information for professionals and older people. The result was the creation of more effective ways to understand what information and services are available and put older people in touch with appropriate organisations that can help them.

All of the LAP pilots promoted partnership and collaborative working to improve older people's access to services. The LAP pilot in Tower Hamlets was one of a number which set up a single point of access to services for older people through community network centres. A simplified process for obtaining services was created by partner organisations working out of the centres or in close contact with them. The Primary Care Trust demonstrated its support for the approach by matching local authority funding so that the work of the centres could be sustained when the LAP pilot funding ended. However, some difficulties were experienced that caused partnership inertia similar to that described by Huxham (Reference Huxham1993a). In particular, there were problems getting some statutory-sector organisations to be sufficiently flexible and responsive to older people's concerns and needs, and there were misgivings amongst some third-sector organisations that did not receive funds from the LAP pilot and might be disadvantaged as a result.

Other evidence emerged of a shift in policy from improving inputs and processes such as developing access, integration or partnership working, towards a holistic understanding of how to achieve people-centred outcomes. For example, a key aim of Nottinghamshire's First Contact project was to reduce preventable injuries in the home by organisations working together in a joined-up way to ensure that older people were able to gain access to preventative services. Huxham (Reference Huxham1993a) has described this type of partnership synergy and the development of collective capacity. It is a collective capacity developed through exploiting interdependencies (Cairns and Harris Reference Cairns and Harris2011; Gray Reference Gray1985; Wassmer and Dussauge Reference Wassmer and Dussauge2011) and agreeing on action to deal with problems (Fredericksen Reference Fredericksen1996). A multi-agency checklist acted as a referral gateway to a range of low-level preventative services for older people, linked through a customer contact centre. The partners involved included the Fire and Rescue Service, Adult Social Care, Health, the Police, the Pensions Service, Welfare Rights, housing agencies, voluntary organisations, and carers and community groups. First Contact provided strong evidence as to how new, more co-operative, working arrangements between statutory, voluntary and community organisations can result in the better co-ordinated delivery of a range of information and preventative services. First Contact estimated that each referral cost £31.77 whilst the cost of dealing with a hip fracture was estimated at £20,426. They concluded that if this approach helped to prevent a hip fracture in 0.13 per cent or more of the older people it helped, then it would be cost effective (see Watt and Blair Reference Watt and Blair2009).

Developing new services for older people

A number of the LAP pilots went further and helped to create partnership capacity that involved genuinely new and innovative ways of working with and for older people through different forms of collaboration, co-production and empowerment. The resultant outcomes emphasised the broader agenda of active citizenship through involvement in education and leisure activities and taking part in projects which viewed older people as active members of the team or workforce. Examples of the former included services designed to address broader community and social wellbeing outcomes by creating and maintaining social capital. The Tower Hamlets Community Network Centres used an outreach approach to address social isolation and promote community cohesion. The centres provided community resources such as a café, educational facilities and art classes to address mental wellbeing issues, and a cross-cultural model of day care for Bangladeshi older people.

There were a small number of examples of the development of employment, self-help and volunteering opportunities for older people. This included evidence of engagement with the private sector, a feature that was noticeable by its absence from much of the secondary data analysed for this research. The most significant employment and volunteering initiative was the Lancaster 50 Forward Employment Agency and Volunteering Bureau. This project was a partnership arrangement that included Lancaster District Older People's Partnership Board, Age Concern and a voluntary organisation called Signpost. It provided employment and volunteering opportunities specifically tailored to meet the needs of older people and empower them through engagement in paid or unpaid work. Over a period of one year, the project was involved in setting up partnership arrangements with 67 local employers. It helped 66 people into paid employment and placed 126 people with various voluntary and community-sector organisations. Gateshead Time Bank was a community involvement project run by Age Concern that focused on stimulating older people's mutual community support. Participants used their skills and time to benefit others, for which they received a one-hour Time Bank credit for every hour of time they gave that could be exchanged for help and support for themselves. Time Bank activities were decided by the demands and offers of people participating in the initiative and included basic housework, befriending, gardening, and helping out in charity shops and day centres. The research found that some types of support that were offered, including gardening and decorating, could be difficult for older people to provide to one another. To address this, they supplemented the Time Bank scheme with other types of volunteer help.

Some LAP pilots sought to stimulate the market to create new organisations that facilitated access to information and advice. However, the research found fewer examples of new organisations being created to provide services aimed at achieving a range of different outcomes for older people. One such project was Gloucestershire's Village Agents, which adopted an innovative community development approach. Village Agents were part of a network of local people employed for ten hours a week in 30 rural areas providing information, advice and a referrals service, for people living in isolated rural communities. They each covered between two and eight parishes with a population of approximately 1,500 older people. On average, the Village Agents were in contact each month with 1,660 people and made 230 direct referrals for services. In one year alone Village Agents made over 20,000 contacts with citizens and dealt with 2,684 enquiries including 192 referrals to the DWP, 136 referrals to fire and safety personnel, and 151 referrals to home improvement agencies (Wilson, Crow and Willis Reference Wilson, Crow and Willis2008).

The Village Agent project signalled a move away from a simple needs-led approach to problem solving towards a holistic people-centred model of active citizenship and the co-production of desired quality of life outcomes. For example, Village Agents and older people worked together to persuade a local bus company to relocate bus stops so that people living in isolated villages could get to and from the shops more easily; convinced the county council of the case for a library in a village hall; established Tai Chi classes; and promoted adult education sessions in a local pub. Moreover, when several towns and villages were cut off by severe floods the networks created by the Village Agents were able to provide an immediate local response, thus demonstrating its success in building flexible local capacity. The Village Agents initiative has not only been sustained beyond the LAP pilot funding period but has also inspired a number of similar community capacity-building projects in other English counties.

The imaginative thinking stimulated by LAP projects was further evidenced in the development of new preventative services with and for older people. An important feature of these projects is how both in initial concept and subsequent adaptive implementation, they reflected the different and diverse contexts of individual older people and the communities in which they live. The Devon Deep Outreach mentoring service was one such example of statutory and third-sector organisations working together to develop their knowledge and understanding of older people's needs and provide new types of preventative services. It was primarily a top-down capacity-building exercise with mentors, who were older people, trained to engage with other older people and encourage the development of activity groups that they could run themselves once they had been set up. In this way older people's skills and learning were enhanced and they were better equipped to be involved in a dialogue with service providers. Consequently, service provider knowledge and understanding of older people's circumstances and changing aspirations for the future were improved.

The Gateshead Older People's Assembly was an example of how older people were encouraged to be at the heart of policy development and service design. It was established as ‘the voice for older people in Gateshead’ to ensure that their views and opinions were considered in relevant strategic planning meetings and they were able to influence service development and delivery policies. One of the tasks undertaken by the Assembly was assessing the appropriateness, accessibility and effectiveness of service provision for older people delivered by a range of organisations. The Assembly's membership of around 1,700 older people was facilitated by a community development worker to co-produce research into social, economic, environment and health issues. Some of the benefits of partnership working that Huxham (Reference Huxham1993a) has described were apparent and included the usefulness of knowledge sharing, joint learning and the better use of resources to improve services. In addition, there was the empowerment of older people through capacity building in partnerships that enabled older people to get together and proactively participate in activities to influence service development and delivery at the local level.