Evaluation of police and fire reform year 4: international perspectives

3 Partnership working and the police 

Key findings: Partnership working

• In all case study areas, the police were working with a wide range of partners including health services, emergency services, local authority departments and third sector organisations. These relationships typically predate reform but are often strengthened in a post-reform environment as new approaches to service delivery are developed,
• Factors identified by the police that supported successful partnership working included: regular face-to-face contact with partner agencies, co-location of services, and having a shared focus. 
• Acceptance of the need for culture change in both the police and partners to enable them to work in a more integrated way was seen as vital for successful partnership working.
• Police reform has been both beneficial and challenging for partnership working for police forces. For example, in the Netherlands, the nationalisation of the police force provided more opportunities for strategic partnership working at a national level but reduced the ability of local police to develop local partnerships.
• Challenges to partnership working included budget constraints, both for the police and partners, as this has a negative impact on staff capacity, leading to less resources being available to support working together. 

In many case study areas there was a view that opportunities existed for information sharing between partners to be improved which could then help facilitate greater collaborative activity.

This chapter focuses on the changes that have occurred for the police in the four international case study areas in relation to partnership working, including changes in either the police service or partner agencies that have impacted on partnership working, and the challenges and opportunities faced in developing effective partnership working. 

3.1 How do partnerships work in practice?

Across all four case study areas, partnership working is key to the way the police operate. For some of the case studies, partnership working is part of the police force’s strategic planning, for example in New Zealand where partnership working is set out and supported at the strategic level through their ‘Prevention First’ strategy. 

3.1.1 Range of partnerships with the police 

All four case study police forces work with a wide range of different partners. Although the range of partners that the four different police forces worked with varied, these tended to fall into the following groups:

• health services, including mental health services
• other emergency services, including fire and rescue, and paramedics
• social services (both public bodies and private companies delivering services)
• local authorities
• housing organisations
• education and children’s services
• elected officials
• third sector organisations
• local businesses.

In many of the case study areas, partnership working is built into specific job roles. All the case study areas have initiatives in place which are based on joint partnership working. For example, in Manchester police frontline staff at constable or sergeant level are co-located with equivalent level staff in partner agencies in shared buildings or work out of places within local communities such as libraries or GP surgeries, on a drop-in basis to reduce barriers to joint working between local partners.

3.2 What has the impact of reform been on partnership working?

Each of the case study locations have experienced changes in the way that they work in partnership with other organisations in recent years. This section explores the ways in which interviewees discuss changes to partnership working, highlighting where these changes can be directly attributed to reform.

While some of these changes relate directly to changes brought about as a result of reform, others reflect changes in the nature of crime, the profile of the local neighbourhood or the way that other public sector organisations are funded. 

Overall, partnership working appears to have been an important element of the reform process in Manchester, New Zealand and the Netherlands, even where this was not a specific aim of reform. For both Norway and the Netherlands, improving partnership working was not one of the stated aims of reform. 

In the Netherlands, one view was that the initial phase of reform was inward-looking and concerned with internal police processes but suggested that attention may shift outward on to partnership working in subsequent phases of reform.

In contrast, working in partnership was an explicit aim of reform in Manchester and New Zealand. In Manchester, the strategic approach taken by the local political leadership is seen as important as it provides a mandate for local partnership working.

3.2.1 The impact of centralisation on partnership working

There is a view that reform has had some unintended consequences on the ability of, and opportunity for, local districts to work in partnership with other organisations. One suggestion is that a centralised police force can, however, provide more opportunities for strategic partnership working at national level.

“I'll stick to the example of mental health where actually we've been able now to make national agreements on how to deal with the mentally ill, and actually come up with a sort of a totally structured approach which is now used everywhere, and that would have been much more difficult when there wasn’t one centralised Police.” (Interviewee: Netherlands)

In the Netherlands there was a feeling expressed that the centralisation of services provided opportunities for partnership working at the national level but meant that local police had often less time available to interact with their local community and to cultivate local partnerships.

3.2.2 Empowering local police officers

In New Zealand the importance of empowering local police officers to interpret the strategy and to build their own relationships with partners at the local level was highlighted. The national framework has “been implemented locally with quite a lot of discretion by Local Commanders” (Interviewee: New Zealand) and there is a level of autonomy granted to local police officers in partnership working.

“…giving a lot more empowerment to the staff to actually make a whole lot of decisions that they would need to make in terms of how they actually policed their local communities, and were empowering local Sergeants that … you know, “You know your community. You tell us how you wanna police it. We’ll get an agreement on how you want to do it, and then you go away and deliver it.” (Interviewee: New Zealand)

3.3 What are the key factors for successful partnership working?

3.3.1 Face to face interaction

In all four of the police forces face-to-face interaction, facilitated by co-location or physical proximity was viewed as a key element of partnership working. Regular face-to-face meetings with partners were viewed as important to successful partnership working. In addition, getting together in the same space to discuss joint response to particular social or operational issues was viewed positively, as was the co-location of services. This was also discussed in a Scottish context in the thematic case study on partnership, innovation and prevention^[15], where regular contact between partners, including co-location helped develop the sense of a collective ‘team’. A driver for this was making better use of collective resources and identifying how to work together better in a time of reduced organisational budgets and growing demands. 

In Manchester, daily face-to-face meetings are held as part of their place-based policing approach and are seen as successful in breaking down communication barriers between partners.

“…it works really well because it’s a daily meeting, it’s accountable, everyone has bought into it, everyone sees the benefits when they work together. So…in the past we were all in our separate little silos and you couldn’t get hold of anybody, now it’s just you turn up at the meeting and you can speak to the people you need. So it’s just…its dead simple, but it works.” (Interviewee: Manchester)

Interviewees from Norway, New Zealand and Manchester all mentioned the value of different services or partners being co-located. In Norway, the co-location of police and fire operational centres was a direct result of reform and allowed services to work together to respond to emergencies.

In Manchester, many services are co-located or use public spaces within the local community to come together. An example of this is the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub, which aims to support the most vulnerable members of the community. The Hub is where co-located services come together to address high priority complex cases. 

In Manchester, the ultimate aim of reform is to go beyond partnership working to full integration of public services, sharing premises, information systems and budgets and allowing the needs of the local area to influence the balance and job profile of staff.

“Co-locating is nice, but integration is better. So, in the past, it's been a case of ... I guess the Police ... it's been a case of policing saying to partners, “I've got a problem. Can you help me with it?” ... and then we've gone through stages of “I've got a problem. Can you help me with it?...it'd be easier if we're in the same building”. We're now at the stage of “We've got a problem. How do we solve it? Which is the best way to solve it?”. So it's quite wholesale reform in that sense.” (Interviewee: Manchester)

In contrast, one of the consequences of the nationalisation of the police force in the Netherlands was to create greater geographical distance between local police and their partners due to the closure of local police stations. This is seen as making partnership working more difficult at the local level.

“…because the police used to work together with partners – especially at the local level – in the management of all kinds of criminal and disorder problems, and, formally, they should continue this. But on the other hand, if you look at how things are working out in reality, it has an unintended consequence, and what we see is that, by...because of the fact that there is more distance between the police and local community, it also means that there is more distance between the police and local partners.” (Interviewee: Netherlands)

3.3.2 A shared focus across partners

The importance of bringing together organisations under a common aim and a shared focus was highlighted in both New Zealand and Manchester as integral to successful partnership working. Partnership working was described as having forced traditional policing issues to be reframed as social issues, which has led to shared goals being developed across the whole public service sector.

In both areas there was a perceived change in the way that the police conceptualise the issues that they are faced with, moving from an approach of “arresting their way out” to a deeper understanding of the social issues related to crime and developing joint problem-solving approaches with other agencies. 

One example from New Zealand of a change in the way public services identify and understand the issues and work together to address the root causes of crime, was their approach to drug use. Traditionally in New Zealand the police have viewed drug misuse as being a criminal problem which needed to be dealt with by the judicial system. However, after a process of knowledge exchange with Scotland, they began working with partners to develop a model to look holistically at the situation for the individual. They explored how they could work collaboratively with other agencies to support the individual to tackle drug addiction and, in so doing, to reframe drug addiction as a health problem. As part of this approach the police brought all the partners together to discuss how to deal with individuals in the community and they used this same approach to deal with family violence. 

“The traditional response was that, “It's a judicial problem, and the courts would solve it”, but what we found is...what we're looking to do is try and rehab the users and actually look to – and will – prosecute the dealers and use that strategy there. Well, to do that, you know, there's housing issues, social problems, education things that we actually needed to have a whole lotta people, so what we did is we actually called together a whole lotta people that would look at how we deal with these particular people…” (Interviewee: New Zealand)

Case study 4

Multiagency approach to reduce family harm

In New Zealand an approach has been developed, led by the police, of a co-located multi-agency approach to family harm. This approach allows police to assess potential risks to a family in any situation that they encounter, to share information on risks such as the health of the family and any indications of drug or alcohol use in the household. These data are then discussed at a multi-agency meeting with representatives from partner agencies including health, education, women’s refuges, the prison service and employment agencies, allowing a coordinated approach to intervention to be agreed across agencies.

3.3.3 A targeted approach

Interviewees from New Zealand and Manchester described working with partners to identify the populations who created most demand across services and developed a more targeted approach towards those most in need. In Manchester, there is a view that the reduction in resources has led to less police being visible on the streets, so they have moved to an approach focused on the most vulnerable communities, moving “from visibility to vulnerability”. (Interviewee: Manchester)

“I think everyone realises demand and actually the same people are involved, you know? You think of those who are going to hospital, those that need mental health, are involved in crime, is .. it's our demand, so it's the same people that need the services from all our partners as well. So our lessons that we're getting from other organisations is really helping us all to focus on the right people.” (Interviewee: New Zealand)

3.3.4 Culture change

For partnership working to be successful, there is often the need for a change in culture or in the mind-set of the organisations involved. In both Manchester and New Zealand, a change in culture has been required both in the police force and in their partners, to allow them to move to a more integrated way of working together. One interviewee in Manchester described moving from a culture of working in silos to one of problem solving.

“It’s that kind of thing that…it’s that kind of culture of creative problem solving instead of what we used to do, just kind of try and bat people away constantly and say we can’t help you, can’t help you, can’t help you. All that does is make people worse and ultimately it’s more expensive. It’s a changing mind-set more than anything, rather than structural sort of changes, you bring people together.” (Interviewee: Manchester)

This was echoed in New Zealand where changes have been observed in the attitude towards collaborating with, and learning from, other organisations in tackling the root cause of social problems which lead to crime.

In both New Zealand and Manchester challenges were identified in relation to culture within the police and in their partners. In New Zealand challenges in overcoming some of the entrenched attitudes within the police service, and the slow pace of change were highlighted, as was a disconnect in cultures between the police and their partners which can create friction.

Case study 5

Working in partnership to innovate from within

In the Netherlands the police developed a process for sharing best practice, which has been introduced since reform. On a local scale, early career stage officers are encouraged to form a group and exchange ideas on how to improve and exchange best practices. On a national scale, they have organised events where police officers are invited from around the country to pitch in a six minute talk their innovation or best practice. They can then invite colleagues to work with them on their projects, with the intention they can be rolled out across the country. 

3.4 What are the challenges and opportunities of reform for partnership working?

This section will explore the challenges that reform has brought to partnership working for police services identified in the international case studies, and will focus on the key findings of:

i. Budgetary constraints experienced by the police services

ii. Budgetary constraints experienced by partner organisations working with the police

iii. Data and information sharing.

3.4.1 Budgetary constraints for the police services

The challenge which was most commonly spoken about across the four case study areas was the level of funding available to both the police and their partners. This tended to be expressed as concerns regarding the availability of staff for partnership activities. Even in the Netherlands, where reduction of spending is not a feature of the reforms, funding has affected partnership working. One view was that the centralisation of the police force in the Netherlands had led to local police chiefs having less discretion on how funds could be allocated at the local level which had implications for local partnerships. 

3.4.2 Budgetary constraints of partner organisations

In Manchester and New Zealand, underfunding of partner organisations was highlighted as a significant challenge in partnership working, particularly in the availability of local services to provide an integrated and joined up response to social issues. At a local level in New Zealand there were concerns expressed by frontline officers about the lack of investment in other agencies which was needed to allow them to fulfil their role as police officers.

Underinvestment in other public services in New Zealand and a lack of other agencies providing out of hours services was viewed as leading to the police having to meet some of the demand from these organisations. Similar concerns have been expressed in Scotland, as evidenced in the report from the geographical case studies in year 2 of the evaluation.^[16] In Scotland, there was a perception among local police officers that financial cutbacks in partner services impacted on these organisations being able to participate in joint working and information sharing. In addition, officers in New Zealand felt that in a context of limited resources they were being tasked with roles they believed should be the responsibility of another agency. 

“I think the other thing is some of the services aren't out there for us, so we need more perpetrator services, we need more services for mental health, addiction services. They're just not there, so we're coming across people. er .. because of the 24/7 organisation, we're starting to deal with and pick up work that other agencies should be doing... because of their lack of funds maybe, or services available...and not being 24/7.” (Interviewee: New Zealand)

In Manchester, cuts to local authority services have led to a loss of expertise at the local level as some positions have been removed and for others their roles have changed to a more central focus. These changes mean that these skilled employees were not available for place-based partnership working.

There was also a view from Manchester that reduced funding across public services can also be a driver for greater partnership working. It was suggested that the lack of funding across the police service and other agencies has meant that they have had to come together in partnerships to find better ways of targeting limited resources. 

3.4.3 Data sharing

Another commonly identified challenge in partnership working was the difficulties in sharing information across organisations and systems, particularly in Norway and the Netherlands. In the Netherlands there was a view that sharing information both within the police force and across partners could be improved. In Norway, one interviewee described the difficulties in accessing health data from those working in the healthcare system due to concerns about breaking the law and breaching confidentiality.

“…it would be a good idea to improve information circulation within the Police, and, from there, with its partners. Well, I would say it's improving, but we're not there yet. It could be... it can be better.” (Interviewee: Netherlands)

Information sharing was seen as less of a challenge in Manchester and New Zealand where systems had been developed to share relevant information across multi-agency partnerships. An example of good partnership working which was highlighted by an interviewee in Manchester was the development by the local authority of a new IT system for drawing together and sharing relevant information held by a range of different agencies with partners. The system allows a user (or identified users) from one of the collaborating agencies to access data, from a range of different partners who are engaged in the information sharing system, including housing and benefits data. It is envisaged it will be expanded to include police, domestic abuse and missing from home data.