Co-operation and assistance – sustaining strong strategic partnership working in Islington

Leaders in Islington recognise that sustaining effective partnership working requires not only cultivating positive relationships but also creating structures and embedding a culture that can sustain partnership working so that the partnership is resilient and enduring.

As one senior Council leader summed it up, “As a local area, Islington has been recognised through external inspection and peer support as providing a strong, mature, and effective children’s partnership. This is down to many factors, but most importantly we believe, are the positive relationships between those partners that underpin it. The following case study therefore sets out how as a partnership, we have gone about developing those positive relationships and ensuring their sustainability, as well as the impact of this on outcomes, in the hope that this will support other local areas with their SEND quest for excellence.”

The SEND Effective Practice Evidence Framework considers that the “strength of evidence” of this case study is good – partnership working arrangements have been sustained for over five years and evaluated through a mixture of internal self-evaluation and external review and inspection. The “breadth of impact” of this case study is good – there is evidence of impact on outcomes for young people, lived experiences of families and positive feedback from partners.