Effective work across and between sectors

We now know that there are the five enablers that create system change.

Over the last few years we have been learning more about how to change systems, culture and behaviour to enable more people to be active. We have developed five enablers of change, these are actions we know need to be taken in order for change to happen.

We will continue to test and refine these enablers to develop our understanding of what needs to be in place to grow change and why. By paying attention to the five enablers of change we can better understand how change happens to enable active lives, but also use them as a framework to plan what to guide our work and shape it.

One of these enablers of change is effective work across and between sectors.

Effective work across and between sectors

Whole system approaches require effective work across and between sectors. Joining work up across the system involves relationship building, connecting the system, partners working together on common projects and productive partnership working around common goals.

Some of the benefits of working effectively across and between sectors can include avoiding duplication across the system, more sustainable funding and an environment that encourages new and innovative initiatives.

Our learning from the latest evaluation and learning report (April 2023), recognises the time and space is needed to develop relationships and trust before reaching a tipping point, however some relationships are not converted to productive partnerships and appear to reach a sticking point instead, possibly inhibited by organisational structures that are not designed for co-ownership, holding siloed working in place.

Examples below are largely one plus one, rather than multi-partnered and can sometimes not ne about physical activity in the first instance e.g. Covid, as long as there is a line of sight (see examples below from Tameside and Salford).

Effective work across and between sectors in action

Different organisations and sectors working together has helped Tameside Council build strong relationships and find new ways to tackle the issues that matter to the wider community through the Cycling Participation Group.

Our working assumption is that ongoing opportunities to jointly solve problems helps embed practices and processes for sustainable collaboration, for example Salford Community Leisure (SCL) and Salford Youth Service (SYS) worked together to establish The Den youth centre.

Learn more about what 'effective work across and between sectors' means

This video from Dr Katie Shearn from the Local Pilot evaluation team gives a brief explanation of how partners across GM are working together and why this is important to enable active lives.

In the last video we spoke about how it was important to build good relationships around common values and trust and then transform this into a productive partnership. In this video we recognise that local pilots have built strong relationships across sectors through their steering groups, but are struggling to work together on common projects. Where this has happened, a small first step working together on a common project has been the catalyst for larger change.