People often ask us how to find another service to partner with for health justice partnership (HJP). When you’re trying to figure out who to partner with, the most important question is why you want to partner in the first place.
Starting with understanding what the need is – it’s good to make a record of this as a baseline so you can see what changes. Then look for partners who may be able to collaborate with you to address the need, to fill the gap. Consider, what is the challenge you hope the partnership will address for your service or patients/clients, and what difference do you think a partnership would make, compared to what you do now?
Then think about what a partnership might offer your partner organisation. What difference will working with you make to their work and outcomes? What difference might it make for your shared patients/clients? To give the partnership its best shot, you need to really want to do this and to see that it adds value to both partners – and, most importantly, to the patients/clients.
Questions for legal services
- Consider who are you hoping to reach and support through HJP. Which health, community or social services are people already accessing (before or instead of directly seeking help from you)? These are the services you may want to reach out to.
- What is the type of legal help you can offer people – and what health or social needs might this help contribute to addressing? This helps you think about what the value of the partnership may look like to potential partners. Legal needs research can also give you an insight into the types of legal needs for different groups of people.
Questions for health services
- What types of issues do you see affecting people’s lives and their capability to engage in health treatment or support?
- Are you already aware of, or connected with, any legal services that can support patients/clients with these issues?
- What do you need to be able to identify and appropriately refer or assist patients/clients to get help with these issues? E.g. training, secondary consultation?
- How do you feel about working with lawyers, and what’s your experience of this to date? Any concerns, fears?
Relationship mapping
Both sets of questions above include taking a good look at the connections that already exist between your service and others, as well as the connections you’ll need to make. Even if you already have good local relationships with other services and networks, it is important to map these out with the aims of this particular project in mind, as different relationships may be needed for success.
Gather all the relevant people involved in your project planning into a room together – the process of mapping current and potential relationships is as valuable as the product. If you already have ways of involving patients/clients and those with lived experience in your work, consider how that perspective can be brought into the room. This process can be as lo-fi as butcher’s paper, or a simple spreadsheet.
Begin by working together to identify everyone who will be important for the success of your initiative – that’s anyone who can be part of the project, who can help you or who you will need to engage with the idea for the first time. This will include your service users, other local services, and potentially funders, local government reps, and other local stakeholders.
Then together, organise these individuals and organisations using a template or the following questions. There are a lot of different templates out there, but the questions to consider are similar:
- What role can they play?
- What is their likely interest in your project?
- What influence, power or resources do they have?
- Who in your team has existing relationships or relevant contacts to approach?
There are likely to be elements you need to research – you might need to look at a community directory, the websites of the current local sector or lived experience/peer networks.
Then prioritise your engagement – how important are different individuals and services to your project, and how much work do you need to do with each of them to build relationships?
Take your time
You won’t go from no relationship to partnership overnight. Remember that different ways of working together can have positive outcomes of their own as well as building the relationships that might lead to a fully-fledged partnership. Take your time to build relationships and connections, and maybe even start thinking about joint activities you could do together as a first step, like exchanging training or useful resources.
And remember – if you need more support to get your partnership off the ground, we’re here to help.
