Building a partnership to support service development

Abstract

Occupational therapists, whatever their grade or whoever their employer, are often in the position of making daily decisions regarding how they manage their time in the workplace. Non-clinical time can be spent on service development, but increasingly tight learning and development budgets require occupational therapy managers to think of innovative ways to develop staff and services. Understanding how to rationalise time investment can enable occupational therapists to be more confident in exploring new ventures for service development. Developing partnerships with other organisations can be an immensely beneficial and cost effective method of service development. Understanding how to reason time investment in establishing partnerships can enable occupational therapists to be more confident in exploring new ventures for developing services. Formation of a partnership is demonstrated through the example of a working relationship between an occupational therapy manager in the National Health Service and a third-sector organisation. This example will describe why the relationship was developed, the activities undertaken in partnership, and the impact these activities have had on service quality and delivery and staff and service improvement.