Case study: Forming a consortium – Voluntary Sector Alliance

Who are the partners?

  • Age UK Cambridgeshire & Peterborough
  • Care Network Cambridgeshire
  • Caring Together

When was the consortium formed?

Formally June 2023, informally October 2022

Why was it formed?

We formed the Voluntary Sector Alliance through a belief that:

Together we are stronger than apart, and together we can create real change and social impact by supporting more people to leave hospital safely, to help avoid unnecessary admissions to hospital and to aid independence at home for the population of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.

Our aim was to achieve a true integrated and collaborative approach to serving the population of Cambridgeshire & Peterborough by leading the way in providing a Single Point of Access for Voluntary and Community Sector Support for Hospital Discharges and Admissions Avoidance. This helps us to:

Reach people earlier in their journey from hospital bed back to home

Provide information and support at the right time

Ensure wrap around support for people before they leave hospital and after

Using our collective resources support and reconnect people into their communities

What were the first steps?

We came together to work on a Nesta 100 day challenge across the acutes in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough, – to find better ways to support discharges from hospital. Following the completion of the challenge, we continued to meet as voluntary sector partners, as we could see that there were ways in which our services already worked in synergy together. Spending time together to understand the offerings of each organisations, we started informally to reach out to one another with the aim of improving outcomes for the people we support.

What are the benefits?

There are many benefits in working together. The people that we support have access to all of our services in a more holistic manner, and don’t feel passed from pillar to post – the aim is that each person we support has access to all of our offerings and to the connections / signposts and referrals we can assist with, helping them to truly feel supported and integrated into their community.

Each organisation represents the whole Alliance at meetings and events and in raising awareness of the services that we offer.

Importantly, our teams report a much more positive working environment, and state how much they enjoy working more collaboratively with people from other organisations, taking away the need to ‘chase referrals’ or feel we are in competition with each other.

What were the main challenges and how did you overcome them?

The main challenges were in the initially stages of coming together. It does take time for trust to form and build and become business as usual within partnership work. It involved somewhat of a culture shift within our organisations, but everyone was fully invested and could see the benefits of our partnership approach.

What are your top 3 tips for any organisations looking to form a consortium?

Look for true synergy between offerings, avoiding duplication, but consider additionality of services.

Be transparent, open and honest with each other, it is important that you can have difficult conversations as well as nice ones.

Stay focussed on the mission and the reasons you want to work together. Leave egos at the door and work together for the benefit of the people you support.

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