Building Capacity for Collaboration

Abstract

The increasing scope and scale of collaborative action places greater demands on potential partners to develop their capacity for working in concert with others. Capacity for collaboration can be characterised in a number of ways all of which are important for effective joint working. It is necessary amongst individuals, in the form of specific skills and attributes that enable them to work across agency boundaries. It is also essential within partner organisations in the guise of a culture supportive of collaboration. Finally, capacity for collaboration needs to be present within the strategies and processes of the collaborative activity itself. Capacity building is an activity most frequently undertaken with communities who lack the skills and resources to enter into collaboration with statutory and private sector partners. In the UK dedicated funding for community capacity building has been a key element in area-based regeneration programmes since the early 1990s. Community capacity building is also evident elsewhere. For example, the municipal government of Versalle, Colombia is facilitating the involvement of communities in determining priorities for a local health strategy (Millan and Acosta, 2000), while the Centre for Urban Research and Learning (CURL) in Chicago is one of a number of agencies in the US dedicated to the development of community capacity through collaborative action research programmes (Hyden et al., 1997). Latterly, however, the focus of capacity building has moved beyond communities to embrace other sectors, and particularly voluntary sector organisations whose resources are frequently more constrained than those of major public sector institutions (see Chapter 5).