Training from partner organisations is one of the great benefits of partnership as there is always something to gain from sharing knowledge and skills. If this is something that you are considering offering your partnership organisation, there are a few things you should consider before you dive in.
Firstly, do you have buy-in to the training and the topic from the people you’re working with? Talk to your partner about what their needs are – in terms of content, as well as style and mode of delivery.
For legal partners, you may need to reality check your expectations of what’s possible in the delivery of training in a health environment. For example, it’s quite common for the only “training time” allocated in a partnership to be 5 minutes at the start of the health team’s meeting.
We also encourage training to go both ways; not only health practitioners learning from legal partners, but also legal practitioners learning from their health partners. It’s one of the many great benefits of partnership, because there’s always something to learn about and gain from the knowledge and skills of different partners (remember: you’re working in partnership because you alone don’t have all the answers!).
Talk to your partners about the goal of the training and be open to their advice on the education strategies that will be of most benefit to their people. Find out:
- What is the need that you are trying to fill? Is training the best tool to use in response to that need? Does your partner see the value?
- Do people need written resources, or in-person training and explanations?
- Is it a case of creating and understanding processes, or is it about building substantive knowledge about a topic? Or is it simply to introduce yourself and explain the help that you can provide?
See the Building Blocks resource for more, particularly from p6 onwards (identifying needs and gaps) and p18 (agreeing what you’ll do together).
