The scale and complexity of social issues is bigger than any one organisation can solve alone. But for partnerships and coalitions of charities, foundations and campaigners to have the most impact, each organisation needs to look beyond their immediate work and focus on a broader vision and plan for change. That is why we offer support to partnerships and collaborations of charities, foundations and campaigners to work together effectively.
We help groups of organisations develop a joint vision, agree how to work together and decide on a work programme that meets their diverse needs. We share tools with the partnerships –for example, we work with them to map their connections and understand how they can work together to multiply their power and influence.
And we do this in a way that is light touch and engaging. We make space for people to build strong and trusted relationships, to find ways of successfully working through difficult issues or conflicts of interest, to share intelligence and resources and to see how they can deliver more together than they can alone.
Case Study
Across the country, hospices provide care to around a quarter of a million people every year at the end of their lives as well as support families through the toughest of times. For Luen Thompson, Chief Executive of Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice, a priority was to work collaboratively with 10 hospices across West Yorkshire to respond to the immediate pressures of Covid-19.
“It all started during lockdown – we had regular weekly calls across the region to share insight and resources through the crisis,” explains Luen. “We set up very practical measures such as a network for distribution of PPE equipment and, with other charity colleagues, setting up a Grief and Loss line offering telephone support and counselling to those who had lost a loved one through Covid-19.”
Realising that there was benefit in deepening this collaboration for the long term, Luen and her West Yorkshire colleagues engaged Lucent to help build the network of hospices across the region.
“Lucent helped us to be really clear about what we wanted to achieve,” explains Luen. “We had already built trust in the immediate response to the Covid crisis, so we knew that having spotted an opportunity for development, motivation was high to make the collaboration work. ”
Over the past two years, Lucent has undertaken in-depth research with each hospice, developed terms of engagement for the collaborative and supported strategy workshops and awaydays. Most recently Lucent has undertaken data analysis and visualisation to map the population that the hospices are reaching. This will help the hospices and understand how well they are reaching ethnic minority communities and providing services in areas of hight deprivation.
This work has brought many benefits. The hospices now have a formal role on the West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board and are working with the NHS to improve understanding of the role of hospices, and to improve provision and funding of palliative and end of life care across West Yorkshire.
“It has been essential to us to have a steady and independent guide to help us navigate through these early days of our partnership. Working with Lucent helped us wade through the treacle and gain clearer insight. Their consultants are incredibly astute with a razor sharp ability to focus on the most important thing.
This work enabled us to identify what we are better off doing together whilst still excelling at what we do best as individual hospices. Working together has provided us with a common point of reference and a structure for future work that I am confident will help us ensure more families across West Yorkshire can access the quality of care and expertise available through the hospice network.”