Convene and chair multi-agency partnership boards with clear terms of reference, escalation routes and decision rights.
Leadership & Management
Systems Leadership Across Multi-Agency Public Service Partnerships
Equips senior public-sector leaders to convene police, health, housing and voluntary-sector partners around shared outcomes, pooled budgets and joint governance rather than single-agency targets.
🗓️Duration5 training days
📚Content4 modules · 8 sessions
🎓On completionAccredited attendance certificate
About the programme
Course Overview
Complex social problems such as homelessness, safeguarding and health inequality span organisational boundaries that no single agency controls, yet budgets, targets and accountability remain organised vertically by department. This course addresses systems leadership: the practice of leading through influence across organisations a manager does not formally command. It covers distributed leadership models, shared outcomes frameworks that translate a joint ambition into measures each partner can report against, pooled and aligned budget arrangements, information-sharing protocols, joint risk registers and partnership governance boards with clear escalation routes. Teaching combines case-based scenario work drawn from real service-redesign challenges, systems-mapping exercises and a simulated partnership board meeting handling a live disagreement over resources. Participants leave able to convene multi-agency boards, negotiate shared accountability across statutory and voluntary partners, and sustain a partnership beyond a single funding cycle or change of political leadership.
Expected Learning Outcomes
Design a shared outcomes framework that translates a joint ambition into measures each partner organisation can report against.
Negotiate pooled or aligned budget arrangements under Section 75 or equivalent agreements without losing individual agency accountability.
Build information-sharing protocols that satisfy data protection duties while enabling timely joint risk decisions.
Resolve conflicting priorities between statutory partners using structured facilitation and interest-based negotiation.
Map the wider system of actors, incentives and dependencies around a shared problem using stakeholder and systems-mapping tools.
Sustain partnership commitment beyond a single funding cycle by embedding governance into mainstream organisational structures.
Who Should Attend
Directors and heads of service in local government, health and policing leading joint initiatives.
Programme leads coordinating homelessness, safeguarding or health-inequality partnerships.
Voluntary-sector chief executives sitting on statutory partnership boards.
Integrated care system leaders working across the NHS, social care and community partners.
Police and criminal justice leaders chairing multi-agency safeguarding or reduction panels.
Central government policy leads designing place-based delivery partnerships.
Course Modules
Select any module to see its sessions and points.
01Mapping the System Around a Shared Problem
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Identifying Actors, Incentives and Dependencies
- Map statutory, voluntary and community actors involved in a shared problem using a stakeholder power-interest grid.
- Distinguish organisations that hold budget, those that hold delivery capacity and those that hold trust with residents.
- Trace how misaligned incentives between partners create perverse outcomes using a causal loop diagram of a real service failure.
- Assess where statutory duties overlap or leave gaps, drawing on safeguarding, housing and health legislation as worked examples.
Session 2Framing a Shared Outcome
- Convert a broad ambition such as reducing rough sleeping into a small set of jointly owned, measurable outcomes.
- Distinguish outcome measures from each partner's existing output targets to avoid duplicated or conflicting reporting.
- Draft an outcomes framework logic model linking activities, outputs and outcomes across agency boundaries.
- Pressure-test proposed measures against unintended consequences such as cost-shifting between partner budgets.
02Governance and Accountability Across Organisations
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Designing the Partnership Board
- Draft terms of reference covering membership, decision rights, escalation routes and dispute resolution for a partnership board.
- Choose an accountable officer and reporting line that satisfies each partner's own governance and audit requirements.
- Design a risk register format that captures shared risks separately from single-agency operational risks.
- Chair a simulated partnership board meeting handling a live disagreement over resource allocation.
Session 2Pooled and Aligned Budgets
- Compare pooled budget, aligned budget and lead commissioner models for funding a joint initiative.
- Structure a Section 75 or equivalent pooled fund agreement covering contributions, governance and exit clauses.
- Model the financial and reputational risk each partner carries when contributing to a shared budget.
- Negotiate a funding formula that reflects differing partner capacity rather than assuming equal contribution.
03Information, Trust and Joint Decision-Making
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Sharing Information Lawfully and Usefully
- Draft an information-sharing protocol that meets data protection duties while supporting timely joint decisions.
- Agree thresholds for escalating an individual case to a multi-agency risk conference.
- Design a shared dashboard that each partner can populate from its own case management system.
- Resolve disputes over data ownership and consent using a documented information governance framework.
Session 2Facilitating Across Organisational Cultures
- Apply interest-based negotiation to reconcile a health partner's clinical priorities with a housing partner's tenancy priorities.
- Use structured facilitation techniques to surface disagreement early rather than let it appear in public meetings.
- Recognise professional and cultural differences between uniformed, clinical and voluntary-sector partners in a joint room.
- Manage a partner that consistently under-delivers without breaking the wider coalition.
04Sustaining Systems Leadership Over Time
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Embedding Partnerships Beyond a Single Leader
- Build succession into partnership governance so momentum survives a chair or lead officer moving on.
- Embed joint working into mainstream job descriptions and appraisal rather than treating it as additional work.
- Secure multi-year funding commitments that outlast a single grant round or political cycle.
- Transfer partnership learning into organisational policy so gains are not lost when the initiative formally ends.
Session 2Evaluating and Evolving the Partnership
- Design an evaluation approach that attributes outcomes fairly across contributing partners.
- Use contribution analysis rather than strict attribution when a single cause cannot be isolated.
- Report partnership performance to elected members, boards and the public in language each audience trusts.
- Decide when to formalise a partnership into a statutory body and when to keep it informal and flexible.
What the participant receives
4 course modules
A structured syllabus
8 training sessions
across 5 days
32 detailed points
Applied, detailed content
Accredited attendance certificate
On completing the programme
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