the swampy ground research project
a resource about partnership working for managers & educators in health & social care
Case Study - 'It has to come from them'
'It has to come from them' :developing private residential nursing homes as 'teaching homes'
This story is about Janet, a nurse adviser in a Social Services Department, who wanted to develop an innovative scheme for private nursing homes to become 'teaching homes'. She wanted this to be part of the support structure locally for achieving new national requirements and quality standards in the sector. This initiative started very much as her idea, drawing on a similar scheme she had read about in Oxford.
The conventional advice was given her :develop a funding bid for it. Janet was starting from a borough-based partnership with local private homes, already meeting 2-monthly in a forum. But when all funding bids were put on hold due to the imminent development of primary care trusts, Janet was forced to ask herself: how else can I develop this initiative? This work was also inter-twined with the ongoing processes for accrediting and inspecting the homes.
Janet's viewpoint: the Nurse Adviser
Mrs Smith's viewpoint: Head of Nursing, independent sector homes
Jenny's viewpoint: Contracts Manager, Social Services
Read or download a PDF of all the stories in this case study.researchers' Commentary
This story highlights the complexities of partnership with private sector organisations.
The business culture and attitudes described had to be thought through and acknowledged by the public sector actors, and not simply ignored, in order to gain progress. It is interesting too that in this partnership a degree of challenge to how the firms portray themselves seems to have produced positive change at least cosmetically, and sends changed signals to users and other stakeholders. It is also important to note that here the viewpoint of service users on the changes and on the working of this partnership is not available.
The story also shows how the credibility of professionals in their own area and holding to this professional expertise may help significantly in partnership situations. Equally Janet needed to draw on skills nad understandings she had from very different settings to make sense of the problems she was facing.
Power and how it is shifting is also a theme in this story. The growing power of contractors vis a vis the local authority is seen by all, yet the new standards regime may cause a swing back the other way. The story expresses very clearly the dynamics of building partnership in situations where it is overlaid with contractual links.
Finally it can be seen how the mechanism of a forum where the participants are essentially in competition may be limited, and that the result of this may be for scarce social services time to be devoted to those who contribute least.
Read or download a PDF of all the stories in this case study.