Co-designing collaboration: the partnership framework as a dialogical method for service user involvement in local communities

In the Netherlands recently a Social Support Act was implemented to establish a system transformation in which responsibilities for the care for persons with chronic conditions, older people and people with disabilities, youth... [ view full abstract ]

In the Netherlands recently a Social Support Act was implemented to establish a system transformation in which responsibilities for the care for persons with chronic conditions, older people and people with disabilities, youth care and work participation are decentralized from the national to local governments. Ideologically, this is accompanied by an increased emphasis on individual autonomy and self-reliance of citizens. It led local governments to install multidisciplinary social support teams to operationalize integral, area-focused care and wellbeing services. In this transformation these teams face the challenge to arrange and organize care and wellbeing services in close collaboration with people in their communities as partners. This created an increased need for contextualized collaborative methods that encapsulate a network-based approach to participation and service-user involvement.
In this paper we present a graphic partnership framework, based on a concept analysis of partnership in the literature, that facilitates dialogue on collaboration between various stakeholder groups in the network. In the method participants as potential partners co-design their preferred partnership, and in the process, enact their new practice. To this purpose, participants first discuss their shared values and aims. Once mutual agreement is reached, they discuss what type of mutual relations and what kinds of behavior they deem necessary. Subsequently, they jointly formulate the conditions for the partnership to work. Finally, participants articulate the concrete actions to operationalize the partnership in their real world interactions, feeding the concepts forward beyond the dialogue session and into their everyday reality.
In the presentation several cases of the framework’s application in various settings are also discussed, and empirical data, reflections and practical experience are shared. Furthermore, practical suggestions for its use by social workers in community settings are provided.