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Local Status and Power in Area-Based Health Improvement Partnerships
Powell, Katie Thurston, Miranda Bloyce, Daniel
Powell, Katie
Thurston, Miranda
Bloyce, Daniel
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Publication Date
2014-04-01
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Abstract
Area-based initiatives (ABIs) have formed an important part of public policy towards more socio-economically deprived areas in many countries. Co-ordinating service provision within and across sectors has been a common feature of these initiatives. Despite sustained policy interest in ABIs, little empirical work has explored relations between ABI providers and partnership development within this context remains under-theorised. This paper addresses both of these gaps by exploring partnerships as a social and developmental process, drawing on concepts from figurational sociology to explain how provider relations develop within an ABI. Qualitative methods were used to explore, prospectively, the development of an ABI targeted at a town in the north west of England. A central finding was that, although effective delivery of ABIs is premised on a high level of coordination between service providers, the pattern of interdependencies between providers limits the frequency and effectiveness of cooperation. In particular, the interdependency of ABI providers with others in their organisation (what is termed here ‘organisational pull’) constrained the ways in which they worked with providers outside of their own organisations. ‘Local’ status, which could be earned over time, enabled some providers to exert greater control over the way in which provider relations developed during the course of the initiative. These findings demonstrate how historically constituted social networks, within which all providers are embedded, shape partnership development. The theoretical insight developed here suggests a need for more realistic expectations among policy makers about how and to what extent provider partnerships can be managed.
Keywords: partnership, collaboration, community services, area-based initiatives, organisational pull, figurational sociology
Citation
Powell, K., Thurston, M., & Bloyce, D. (2014). Local status and power in area-based health improvement partnerships. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, 18(6), 561-579. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363459314524802
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Journal
Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine
Research Unit
DOI
10.1177/1363459314524802
PubMed ID
PubMed Central ID
Type
Article
Language
en
Description
This is the authors' PDF version of an article published in Health© 2014. The definitive version is available at http://hea.sagepub.com
Series/Report no.
ISSN
1363-4593
EISSN
1461-7196
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National Health Service (NHS)