Health & Social Care: Evaluating Partnership Relationships

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of working in partnerships within the health and social care sectors. It begins by defining partnerships and highlighting their importance in achieving common goals, fostering responsibility, and ensuring clear understanding of duties. The essay then delves into the philosophies underpinning effective partnerships, including empowerment, respect, independence, informed decision-making, autonomy, and power sharing. Different types of partnership relationships are examined, such as general, multispectral, and at-will relationships, along with their respective merits and demerits. The discussion extends to the benefits of partnerships, such as increased capital, flexibility, shared responsibility, and wider skill pools, while also addressing potential barriers like communication gaps and skill disparities. Finally, the essay emphasizes the importance of evaluating partnership relationships to identify and address negative perceptions and structural barriers, advocating for standardized approaches that promote effective collaboration and service delivery.

WORKING IN PARTNERSHIPS
IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
TASK 1: PARTNERSHIPS AND RELATIONSHIPS

INTRODUCTION
 Working In Partnership: a trust based mutual relationship between the people involved in
partnership for improving the quality of benefits.
 Working partnership is essential for health and social care as:
 It ensures that the health care organization and people working for them have a common goal;
 It boost equal sense of responsibility and determination for employers and employees;
 It helps employees to have clear understanding of duties;
 A good partnership between management and working staff is important for the people also who are being
taken care of.

PHILOSOPHIES OF WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP
Philosophies
Empowerment Respect Independence Making informed
choice Autonomy Power sharing

PHILOSOPHIES OF WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP
Empowerment Partnering organizations empower each other through adequate
coordination and cooperation of activities
It also meant to enabling the staff members and the caretakers to
ensure making of self-decisions
For example, people may be provided with the choice of taking their
food on timings as they wish or feel hungry

PHILOSOPHIES OF WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP
Respect Partnership stresses on
having mutual respect
between the concerned
parties to facilitate smooth
Respect for both patients
and staff is essential to

PHILOSOPHIES OF WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP
Independence Individual must be able to stand on its own irrespective of the others
working in a partnership
Independence in health and social care ensures that everyone has the
freedom of making decisions, however, it should be noted that it may
have positive or negative influence on other partners
For example, a rehabilitation centre that provides services to recover
from injuries in collaboration with a team of physiotherapists should
also be capable of providing its services without their assistance

PHILOSOPHIES OF WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP
Making
informed
choice
Partners in health and social care sectors must be able to make
informed decisions for the benefit of each other as well as the
patients and caretakers
Adequate communication and sharing of information between
the partners is essential to make informed decisions
For example, Drug suppliers should be informed in advance so that
they can deliver drugs at appropriate time in order to minimize drug
shortage issues

PHILOSOPHIES OF WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP
Autonomy It is the self-governance of the company that is protected by the
participants of partnership agreement.
For instance, although a Clinical commissioning group and care
home are partners to increase the quality both the companies have
the governance to manage promotions, recruit employees and
provide trainings or their own.

PHILOSOPHIES OF WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP
Power sharing It implies that when two companies are decided to become partners
then the power to take decisions and making choices has to be shared
among the two businesses equally.
Only one firm should not have more power, as can result in
employees frustration.
A shared power to take any actions and making choices are greatly
required in the partnership business.

TYPES OF PARTNERSHIP RELATIONSHIPS
• People working in a same team of health care organization share general relationship
• These people are willing to help whenever requiredGeneral Relationship
• In such partnership organisations from distinct sectors of the community work together.
For instance, a nurse from healthcare guide people about diseases like cancer, AIDS, etc.
In the same manner, a housing sector worker supports the homeless people in realising
the particular disease risks and assists them about some adequate housing facilities.
Multispectral
• For example, the relationship between suppliers and supply chain department. These
partners interact when there is a requirement of procurement or making payments,
otherwise there is hardly any communication
Relationship at Will

MERITS AND DEMERITS OF WORKING WITHIN A PARTNERSHIP
Merits
• Increased capital
• More flexible
• Shared responsibility
• Easy decision making
• Wider pool of skills
• Creative brainstorming
• Cost-effective operations
• Workforce development
• Learning and lobbying
• Coordinated service delivery
• New resource bidding
• Meeting the requirements of
statutory partnership
Demerit
• Disagreements may lead to split ups
• Unlimited liability
• Limited authority

MERITS OF WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP
 Increased Capital: More partners bring more investments to the health care unit, which facilitates better flexibility
and growth potential.
 Flexibility: In comparison to larger health care companies, working in partnership is easier to form, manage and
operate.
 Shared responsibility: Partners share responsibilities among themselves according to individual capability.
 Decision making: The decision making gets easier as more ideas of solving a particular issue become available.
 Wider pool of skills: More individuals bring a combination of wider pool of skills and knowledge to the health
care firm.
 Creative brainstorming: Every person contributes their input and ideas for resolving issues, then brainstorming is
used to generate creative ideas.
 Cost-effective operation: Less chance of health care agency to produce counterproductive or repetitive services
which makes it more cost-effective.