Developing a Partnership Working Tool
Staff involved: Catherine Hurley

As a part of the follow-up from the "What works?" systematic review, it was agreed that SACHRU would explore tools designed to measure partnership working between community health services and other agencies/services, whether from the health sector or other sectors. There is an extensive literature on partnership work - both the reasons for and against it - and numerous tools have been developed to measure the impact and outcomes of working together. Many of these tools have been developed in recent years in places such as the UK where initiatives such as health actions zones were designed to bring together health and other sectors in working to deal with the effects of social inequities. The USA has also produced a number of tools looking at how to measure partnerships. This large volume of literature indicates that it is difficult to find one tool that would suit all contexts and circumstances. At this stage, we are focussing on finding a tool that will suit community health workers who are undertaking small local projects with one or more local partners.

Findings and the tool to be used will become available in the next few months.