Explaining the SCiP Alliance's partnership approach
Posted in Views by Kath Lawrence
Everything the SCiP Alliance achieves, it achieves through partnership. We bring together professionals who are passionate about supporting Service children through their childhood journey and into thriving adult lives. Coming together behind a vision for change and translating that passion into informed action is what has enabled the Alliance to grow from a time-bound project led by a small core group to a large, highly engaged network of hundreds of people across the UK giving new attention to this mission.
So what has it taken?
Trust is at the heart of partnership. Trust between organisations and trust between individuals underpins all successful collaborations. Putting the voices of the children and young people our partners work with at the heart of all we do is key. The Alliance, hosted by the University of Winchester, has established strong personal relationships, facilitated by the central team but also championed by our Hub leads, Board and steering group members and other ambassadors. Robust mechanisms have built a culture of openness. We have done this through clear communication and documentation, explicit consideration of risks, ethics and opportunities and strong oversight by the community through boards and steering groups. We have based everything on evidence and thought long and hard about the value each partner brings and how we can build on each one's complementary focus and expertise while working within capacity. The central team is ever mindful of the generosity of our partners, always open to new suggestions. The partnership has proved agile enough to adapt to rapid change and take advantage of opportunities while maintaining its core values.
And why is it so powerful?
Our partnership approach has produced a network which is far more than the sum of its parts. As we align around an issue that matters to us all, our focus on the shared mission is complemented by individual and regional innovation within a network which makes sure effort and knowledge does not go to waste.
How and why do we plan to strengthen our partnership approach?
The Alliance is currently strengthening its core operating mechanisms. The new community will be convened by a representative Management Group and a newly constituted Board and intimately linked to the Hub network. This comes from a recognition of the need to broaden the conversation, bringing in new voices and finding new ways to champion the voices of Service children and their families. Each partner's strengths and perspectives will be explicitly brought into a cycle of listening, planning and action, so that we collectively achieve together what we could never contemplate alone, maintaining that spirit of trust and openness that must underpin any partnership endeavour.
