Developing and maintaining external partnerships for the best health and care outcomes

Collaboration across health, social care, and local government continues to shape how support is delivered, demonstrating how stronger connections across our sector can help us meet challenges, share learning, and improve outcomes for the people we support.

In this issue, we highlight networking and learning opportunities for care managers to strengthen effective partnerships, alongside key guidance to support further understanding.

This course encourages you to reflect on the nature of collaboration and the different forms it can take. You’ll engage with practical examples by watching video clips that show collaboration in action and reading relevant case studies that demonstrate how powerful collaboration can be. You’ll be presented with some specific skills and behaviours that will increase the probability of successful collaboration in your working life.

Integrated care systems (ICSs) are the centrepiece of the biggest legislative overhaul of the NHS in a decade. From July 2022, England will be formally divided into 42 area-based ICSs, covering populations of around 500,000 to 3 million people.

This module supports social care managers to build effective internal and external partnerships that strengthen practice and improve outcomes for people using services. It explores how strong relationships enable shared learning, access to expertise and resources, and more effective, person-centred support.

Aligned with Standard 5 of the Manager Induction Standards, the module focuses on partnership working and co-production, helping managers reflect on existing relationships and identify practical next steps towards Good and Outstanding practice.

By the end of the module, managers will be better equipped to understand why partnership working matters, what makes partnerships effective, and how co-production can be embedded into everyday practice.

This standard relates to the importance of building relationships and partnerships as part of your role as a manager within adult social care.

This document sets out guidelines to help integrated care boards (ICBs), local authorities and health and care providers continue to progress neighbourhood health in 2025/26 in advance of the publication of the 10 Year Health Plan. 

The aim of this resource is to inform and support older people’s moves into and between social care settings. These resources are grounded in real-life experience and evidence from our co-production work, the literature review and interviews around care moves and how to improve practice.

Beyond partnerships with healthcare, there is a wide range of other partners for adult social
care providers to work together with. These examples are drawn from Skills for Care’s discussions with providers about who they are partnering with and how this helps.

Skills for Care host a range of networks designed to support leaders and managers across adult social care. These groups offer space to connect with peers, share challenges, and hear updates from local partners and system leaders. Use this directory to find your local network and the contact details of your locality manager.

This report explores how co-production shapes innovation in social care, drawing on the views of over 800 people with lived experience, unpaid carers, family members, frontline staff and system leaders. The report reinforces the importance of genuine partnership working and offers practical steps to strengthen co-production, supporting more inclusive and effective innovation across social care.

Skills for Care host a range of networks designed to support leaders and managers across adult social care. These groups offer space to connect with peers, share challenges, and hear updates from local partners and system leaders.

These top tips, and key actions, have been co-developed to support effective collaborative partnership working in the planning and delivery of community mental health services. They recognise that every heath and care system will experience challenges in relation to partnership working given the statutory and cultural differences of organisations working across the mental health pathways and that there will be different arrangements to frame local partnership working, including for example a Section 75 agreement.

An information page on partnership working in health and care.

This tool was created to help get you thinking about how well you currently work with partners. You can start by assessing what you do well and where you may look to improve. Rate yourself from 1-5, with five being strong in an area and one being an area in need of the most improvement.