Collaboration and partnership: a review and reflections on a national project to join up local services in England

The need to provide more joined services in health and social care is now recognized by governments as a major objective, and technology is increasingly seen as the key to achieving it. This paper is based upon the authors' experience as research partners in a national project in England known as FrAmework for Multi-agency Environments (FAME). In the first phase of FAME (April 2003 - October 2004) six local "strands" led by local authorities worked in partnership with service providers and IT suppliers. Each partnership aimed to support collaboration and interaction between professions in a particular set of services (for example, to vulnerable older people or disabled children) through effective and appropriate exchange of information. This paper examines the literature on partnership and collaboration in public services in order to contextualize and reflect upon IT-enabled multi-agency partnerships.