Knowledge Transfer Workshop Toolkit How to develop effective models of cooperation by establishing and articulating Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and opportunity Ian Goldring, JOBTOWN Lead Expert ABOUT THIS TOOLKIT This toolkit builds on the contributions to and case studies from the JOBTOWN June 2013 Transnational Workshop in Avilés Spain, made by: . Lucy Pyne, from the OECD Local Economic and Employment Development programme (LEED) . Nadine Schrader-Bölsche from the Department of Regional Development and Spatial Planning, University of Kaiserslautern (Germany) . Councillors Del Goddard (London Borough of Enfield) & Andy Smith (Thurrock Council) . Aviles Avanza Pact (Aviles advances pact) representatives . Avilés Youth Commission: Empléate Joven . Participating JOBTOWN partners This toolkit is supported by a Video available on the Online Mutual Learning Helpdesk. All workshop presentations are available for download from the Online Mutual Learning helpdesk JOB TOWN: A European Network of Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and Opportunity Purpose of this document . To provide a sort of toolkit, you are encouraged to make use of but are not obliged to slavishly apply from beginning to end – take what’s useful to you. To support transfer of main Workshop learnings to your local organisations and those unable to attend the Workshop themselves. To facilitate getting you to articulate your own model of cooperation and form a clearer idea of what sort of partnership suits your needs and what you want from it – using this support as a springboard. To learn from you, so as to monitor and improve the Knowledge Transfer Workshop methodology continually, throughout the project lifecycle. To this end I will be contacting each of the Local Coordinators after the KTW to find out how the process went (what worked and what didn’t, and any pertinent observations). Important: There is no one right model for how to structure your own local cooperation; it all depends on your needs, circumstances and possibilities. The intended method here is to lead you through a consideration of a series of factors and issues – your responses to which will be the basis for you articulating your approach to partnership locally. 1) The LEED checklist for evaluating effective partnerships The Local Economic and Employment Development programme LEED recommends using this list of 8 points as a basic tool for evaluating effective partnership; it might be useful to you as an ‘off the rack’ structure for kicking off evaluative discussion with your partners and associates. I.e. as Local Coordinator you lead them through a discussion of the following, with the participants asking themselves if they are able to: 1) Agree strategic priorities? 2) Exert strong leadership? 3) Demonstrate clear accountability? 4) Develop effective links and relationships? 5) Agree and set clear indicators of success*? 6) Monitor and report on performance effectively? 7) Manage and improve performance? 8) Plan delivery effectively? * Careful the tail does not wag the dog, you cannot let your goals be determined by what you can most easily demonstrate as successful (i.e. due to pressure to be accountable and the convenience of certain simple clear quantitative indicators such as ‘number of people attending event’ etc. – this happens more often than one might think), rather than what you need. You may need to consider how to do qualitative evaluation, particularly where you are creating nothing new, but rather trying to improve existing services and processes. We will be discussing this throughout the project. JOB TOWN: A European Network of Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and Opportunity 2) “Where can partnerships go wrong?” Now for the negative. The presentation Ms Pyne from the OECD LEED programme made in our first Workshop included a slide on “Where can partnerships go wrong?” which describes situations one might easily recognise, and it seemed worth quoting in its entirety (bold added): 1. h’Fair weather’ partnerships set up during the good times and perhaps lacked consensus but partners able to rub along together as money was flush. Now harder to agree on priorities. Discussions can activate tension and create confrontation (note: as Ms Pyne pointed out, there might be an eventual upside to this, if handled right, in terms of getting such tensions brought out into the open and somehow dealt with, as long-term it “could be more dangerous to skirt around contentious areas”). 2. Partner ‘domination’. All bodies might be involved in setting up partnership but objectives defined too much according to the prime concerns of the leading agents, at the cost of local needs; 3. Establishment often begins with high enthusiasm from policy makers and individual organisations but find it too difficult to maintain the partnership; 4. Partnerships can usurp the authority of individual partners, and accountability, risk and responsibility are not shared equally; 5. May be hidden agenda or it was created just to ‘keep up appearances’; 6. Can have divided loyalties. E.g. Some actors may be accountable to the national level in relation to targets. It’s healthy to keep these ‘reefs’ in mind as you develop your partnership and more specifically your ULSG roadmap. 3) Differing structures of partnerships The issue of how the partnership is structured is particularly sensible to think about at the beginning when you are choosing a structure to operate with (i.e. you can make changes later, but it’s not as easy to do so as now). Factors to consider regarding partnership structure: The following is drawn from the LEED and University of Kaiserslautern presentations, heavily re-edited with additional comments in blue. The point is not to tell you how to structure your local cooperation, rather it is to set out a series of key factors, allowing you to consider – and discuss with your partners – how you structure your cooperation locally: JOB TOWN: A European Network of Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and Opportunity ⇒ How binding or obligatory do you want cooperation to be? There’s no one right answer, rather you must identify what best suits your circumstances. Consider: Binding cooperation - Pro: Clearly defined rules and responsibilities, results guaranteed (they must) - Con: Formal and bureaucratic, rigid, feeling of obligation not desire Non-binding cooperation - Pro: flexible and freer, - Con: Roles and responsibilities not clear, requires lots of self motivation, no guarantee of quality of work or fairness of work burden Semi-binding - Some combination of the above - Essentially it’s voluntary to participate with obligations if you do - Allows for flexibility of roles and adapts to different types of participants (e.g. those with differing capacities to deliver or participate, such as a business person who comes only occasionally but whose involvement is worth obtaining) - Defined structures that can be changed. ⇒ You want an agile response system, which is adaptable to constant change and new challenges. One way to get this is to set up an operative core group separate from a larger constellation of stakeholders. - However this entails a risk of excluding necessary actors, who may then lose interest, oppose or generally become difficult. – Conclusion: Watch out. ⇒ Enough scope (amplitude, breadth, range) to suitably involve all relevant or necessary actors. – Considering this will be part of your thinking how to avoid the above-described risk. ⇒ A stable structure - JobTown gives you some budget for this – think about how any post-URBACT cooperation structure will be financed/resourced. ⇒ Designated full-time partnership coordinator to manage partnership - In JobTown this would be the ULSG Coordinator or the ‘project Local Coordinator’ depending on each partner – think about who would carry on in such a role post-URBACT. ⇒ Easy to dismantle whenever utility has run its course JOB TOWN: A European Network of Local Partnerships for the Advancement of Youth Employment and Opportunity ⇒ Co-ordinating figures can be relied on to improve collaboration, where strategic partnerships are not established and doing so is not a practical option (e.g. due to time issues, etc.). LEED cites examples to say such coordinators might: - “Help match local businesses and workers with job opportunities - Work with communities to find innovative solutions to unemployment - Work with stakeholders to develop Regional Employment Plans.” This might sound something like your administration’s role locally pre-URBACT. Realistically, it is possible you will go back to an improved version of such an approach if your partnership dissolves or goes dormant once our project-cycle is over Any number of structural models, flow charts, organograms etc. are possible, corresponding to differing circumstances, objectives, etc. Two simple general typologies we have most talked about in JobTown discussions thus far are: i) A system of concentric circles of involvement, with a small operational working group at the centre, a larger group of stakeholders involved and providing input, approval and so on, with the possibility of yet larger scale involvement, through public consultation processes and the like. The idea being to balance the need for a small enough working group – so as to be operational – with the need for wider consultation, involvement and legitimacy. ii) Dividing up participants in work groups by theme, with some kind of connecting