Introduction

In the past decade, collaboration, both within and across sectors, has been a strong component of UK public policy, often integral to funding decisions. Public agencies have increasingly been required to collaborate with non-state providers to plan, monitor and deliver welfare services, with voluntary sector organisations (VSOs) providing an increasing range of services from early years to old age. The voluntary sector (VS) role in socially deprived neighbourhoods has also grown until recently, with policy makers recognising its expertise in working with marginalised groups of people. However, as earlier chapters identified, collaborative ventures may well be driven by competitive funding regimes, raising questions about how different strategies intersect.

Recent arrangements have frequently involved VSOs in collaboration within and across sectors, and partnership work has underpinned frameworks through which many local services are planned, managed and delivered. Both the current and previous governments have encouraged shifts away from a silo mentality of services towards ideas of integration, emphasising locally designed projects. However, as Hoggett (2004) illustrates, structural change in various forms – devolving public services; inter-agency and ‘joined-up’ work; cross-sector planning; and community-led projects – have, at different times, been offered as solutions to varied problems. Over more than a decade these have included the need to: reform and modernise welfare; tackle challenging social problems; improve service efficiency and responsiveness; and, more recently, reduce welfare spending and loosen the hold of ‘big government’ (Cabinet Office, 2010b).

Yet the difficulties that need to be overcome to achieve desired changes or improvements, including the protracted efforts often required for disparate organisations to cooperate around common goals, have repeatedly been glossed over; and many local experiences of collaboration have been discouraging (Milbourne, 2009a; Mills, 2009).

Research has identified numerous barriers to collaborative work (Huxham and Vangen, 2004; Snape and Taylor, 2004) at interpersonal, institutional, structural and policy levels, and also factors contributing to positive outcomes (Glaister and Glaister, 2005; Glasby and Dickinson, 2008). While discussion of inter-agency working is not new, a growing literature has highlighted the complexity of issues involved, including individual and organisational values and interests; and the local contexts that intersect with different policy drivers (Glendenning et al, 2002; Rummery, 2006; Taylor, 2006), producing unpredictable social interactions, interpretations and outcomes.