Partnership working between the state and the voluntary and community sectors is an important, if sometimes less widely publicised, element of Labour's new agenda for the development and delivery of social policy; it has recently taken on a more formal guise through the introduction of Compact agreements between the sectors. However, translating the formal commitments within Compacts into practical partnership working is likely to require greater levels of understanding and commitment than has generally been the case in previous relations between the state and the voluntary and community sectors. It is also important to recognise the differences between the voluntary and community sectors themselves (see also Chapter Nine). This chapter describes the endeavours by the New Labour governments to formalise partnerships between statutory and voluntary sector organisations through the new mechanism of ‘Compacts’; and explores the potential for partnership working through an analysis of the experiences of a small number of voluntary organisations. Attention thus focuses on these rather than on community action, but even here the clear message is that diverse needs and circumstances will not easily be captured within single regulatory frameworks.

The developing government agenda

The government has established a clear agenda for ‘modernising’ public services, particularly in the welfare field. This modernisation agenda is very much at the centre of the government's much trumpeted ‘Third Way’ for welfare reform, which involves, inter alia, a renewed commitment to ‘partnership’ between different providers in the welfare economy. It is now widely recognised, of course, that, despite the ‘welfare state’ reforms of the mid-20th century, which established the major public services for health, housing, education, income support and social care in the UK, there has always been a mix of providers – public, private and voluntary – supplying welfare services to citizens. This variation is usually referred to as the ‘mixed economy of welfare’ (see Chapter One).

However, a mixed economy of welfare is not the same thing as collaboration or partnership working. The latter terms imply joint involvement in service development and delivery, not just the use of providers from different sectors. Beveridge (1948), often regarded as the architect of public welfare provision of the post-war period, was in fact a proponent of cooperation between public and other welfare providers, particularly voluntary sector agencies, although he saw the relationship mainly as one of complementary working rather than formal partnership.