(Fife Community Plan)
A partnership brings together organisations, often from across the public, private, voluntary or community sectors, to pursue a common vision and to work together to achieve more than any of them could on their own. It can be informal or formal. It can involve a handful of organizations or a wide range. It may be a local partnership focused on a small area of Shetland or a Shetland wide partnership. Partnerships can vary in many ways:
Sector - they may involve organisations from all sectors - public, private, voluntary and community - or just from a single sector.
Vision - they may focus on a single issue (or even a project) or be long terms and broadly based.
Structure - they could be relatively informal arrangements (e.g. a voluntary association) or formalised in a legal company.
Focus - they could have a local regional or national focus.
Size - they could have significant resources or be operating on a 'shoestring'
Community Participation - they could actively involve local communities in areas of disadvantage or communities of interest.
In other words there is no single model of partnership working for taking forward community planning. This reflects the fact that structures are being developed to meet local needs and circumstances and in many cases build upon existing arrangements.
It can be assumed that the people involved in partnerships are there because they are committing an organisation or a service to an area of work that will need changes to current practice or is about developing improvements.
Vital to the process of successful partnerships therefore is the strength of the relationship between the people who are in the partnership and their service or agency.
The variety of partnership types in Shetland is shown in the Who's Who in Shetland's main partnerships.
Organisations such as SIC and NHS Shetland has services that may be involved in a number of relevant partnerships which makes it vital that within those services ways must be found to work in a complementary way rather than pull against different priorities.