A brief analysis of the multi-stakeholder partnership activities within SKiM and the Community of Practices it supports using CoP-Track.docx

Abstract

Partnerships are formed for diverse reasons, and each has a “life” of its own. Even if everything functions well, it does so within a given context: whenever the situation changes and new tasks are assigned to a partnership, the conditions for its work and success change. The increasing importance of partnership working has been one of the most notable developments in public policy over the last 40 years (Stoker, 2011). Collaboration became dominant (Skelcher and Sullivan, 2008), and partnerships have emerged as the instrument of choice for implementing most public programs (Turrini et al., 2010). Over the last decade, partnerships have engaged in various activities designed to promote political dialogue, knowledge exchange, peer-to-peer learning and capacity building related to transparency on many systems, including health and social care, community policing, childcare, community cohesion, the knowledge economy and regeneration, etc. However, making collaboration work effectively is highly resource-consuming and often painful in practices (Huxham 2003).