Evaluation of partnership working within a community planning context

Partnership working has become an increasingly popular way of delivering public services. It is essential, however, that partnership working actually leads to the delivery of improved public services and evaluation will be required to ensure this is happening. This paper outlines efforts to evaluate the performance of a Community Planning Partnership in the East of Scotland. Community Planning Partnerships were instigated to try to reintegrate the public services in a local authority area which had previously been fragmented. Research on process issues with the partners using a partnership assessment tool and interviews suggest that the partnership is working satisfactorily. Unfortunately outcome evaluation based on focus groups from residents associations suggested serious difficulties and perceptions that services had not improved. As a result of the evaluation, meetings took place between partners and service users and significant progress was made towards resolving these difficulties