Collaborating with your community on an ongoing basis

To really make the most of the knowledge and skills that exist in Barnet communities, we will often want to work with communities as equal partners.

This can take several different forms, including co-designing, co-producing or co-delivering services. Check out our glossary to be clear on what these different terms mean.

Rather than following a set process, collaboration is about an approach to how you work. It requires you to see communities as active partners in the work you are doing, rather than simply users of a service or people who are consulted about what where they live. Taking this approach allows you to integrate the insights, skills and knowledge they have with your own, in order to make a better result together.

Getting started with collaboration:

• Open-up possibilities: It may feel at first like your area of work isn’t suitable for deeper collaboration. This is normal as many of our broader social structures have not been built around a collaborative approach. However almost any area of work will have possibilities for deeper partnership once you start exploring. Try using our Participation kick-starter to open up areas of possibility.
• Power check: Collaboration involves creating a more equal power relationship between communities and service providers. Before engaging with communities on ideas around collaboration, it’s worth considering what your current relationships with communities look like. Who holds the power over decisions? Who is seen as having what knowledge or expertise? How might this need to change if you are going to collaborate more honestly?
• Open conversations: Truly collaborating means not pre-deciding the outcome and process in advance. Consider what opportunities you have for open conversations with key affected communities, or how you can create them. What are their priorities? What skills and knowledge do they have that they want to contribute? To begin exploring these issues you might want to organise specific events, or hold a series of individual conversations, or utilise opportunities with partners. This requires becoming comfortable with uncertainty and being willing to actively listen and respond to community priorities.
• Considering mechanisms: There are a wide range of ways you can collaborate with communities. Almost any area of your activity can potentially be delivered in a more collaborative way. This is a non-exhaustive list to help you think creatively about options:
• Can communities help you design a new service that they have been missing? Or change an existing one?
• Can communities be involved in changing how you communicate with them?
• Can communities help you understand the issues that affect them by taking a collaborative approach to research?
• Can communities be involved in decision-making about issues affecting their area or services they use?
• Can you collaborate with communities on commissioning?
• Are communities well placed to deliver services themselves, either instead of or alongside you?

You can see great examples of deeper collaboration both nationally and within Barnet.

There are also lots of great resources available to support you with collaboration. You can find some good starting points by reading about co-production and national resources about co-production.

Below is a prompt question to help you consider what affected communities would like to collaborate with the council on.