We have launched a tender to develop a tool/resource that supports multisector collaborations aimed at improving community wellbeing. Click here to tender for this work.
Addressing the complex challenges facing communities across Wales will require meaningful partnerships that bridge the gap between the public sector and the communities they support. WCPP’s latest engagements reveal that despite the appetite and willingness to collaborate across sectors in Wales, and an evidence-base supporting it, barriers remain in the way of lasting collaborations between the community and public sectors. Although we recognise there are no silver bullets for breaking down all the known and unknown barriers to collaboration, we have been scoping what more we can do as an evidence centre to help to catalyse and foster more collaborative behaviours and practices.
Since 2023, the Wales Centre for Public Policy (WCPP) and the Resourceful Communities Partnership (RCP) have developed an evidence-base related to multisector collaboration to improve community wellbeing. For the past year (2024-25) we have been exploring how to better translate this evidence into action. Building on some initial scoping work, we:
- Held three design workshops to bring together stakeholders from across Wales to test ideas and surface real-world needs.
- Led one-to-one interviews with key stakeholders and engaged our wider Welsh network to validate our workshop insights.
- Conducted a desk review of existing, publicly available tools and resources we could draw learning from.
These engagements sought to understand what more practitioners might need to take evidence-based action. Engagements didn’t seek to find the solution, instead, to gain deeper insight into whether there is genuine demand for developing a tool or resource to support action and, if so: What’s needed? Who needs it? What might they want to do, experience, and achieve by interacting with the tool/resource? In this blog we highlight some of our key learnings and share what we plan to do next.
Key learning from our engagement activities
The workshops highlighted both enthusiasm and frustration. Many discussions explored the cultural, structural, and behavioural barriers that collaborations face. These barriers can create unequal partnerships, or misaligned expectations, between community and public partners stemming from different budgets, governance structures, monitoring systems, and ways of working that can lead to these sectors simultaneously working ‘together’ but also apart.
When asked what might help to bridge the implementation gap, stakeholders voiced concerns about developing ‘another toolkit’ that might not be used. They encouraged us to think about longevity and impact from the beginning — for example, by embedding what gets developed into existing practice and processes — so it goes beyond existing resources to mitigate the risk of just ‘sitting-on-a-shelf’. Three key requests were to develop a mix of a digital tool, complemented by human interaction, that:
- Helps to bridge the strategic level with the local, community level
- Provides clear links to and examples of good practice
- Connects users to a wider network of support, evidence and resources
While we aren’t sure if blending the human and digital will be feasible, many stressed the need for human connections as they felt it would be impossible for a digital resource to consistently provide current, relevant information that users can apply to navigate existing structures and/or overcome certain barriers to collaboration.
Key learning from our desk review
In order to learn from existing practice and avoid duplication, we reviewed 36 resources identified by workshop attendees and through broader internet searches. The desk review revealed critical gaps and opportunities for innovation:
- there is no existing resource or tool related to multisector collaboration that is interactive, user-centred and up-to-date.
- the vast majority of existing resources are static PDFs, many with broken links and limited evidence of uptake or impact.
- none of the tools reviewed fully enabled a diagnostic function or provided navigator capabilities—features that workshop attendees repeatedly identified as important.
A key takeaway from this review was that the ambitious vision for the tool/resource and the technical and resource-related challenges associated with realising it might explain why no resource of this kind currently exists. An area we have yet to explore is whether the rapid development of accessible generative artificial intelligence applications may help to make our vision more technically feasible.
Takeaways and next steps
We started this work sceptical about demand for another tool or resource given how many already exist but ended inspired by the level of sustained interest and momentum generated by the workshop series. The latter provided WCPP with sufficient confidence to put this challenge out to tender to explore the range of possible partners and solutions that might exist. We are hoping to take this work forward in autumn 2025 through 2026.
We don’t expect to create a panacea for multisector collaboration between the community and public sectors, but we do hope to make meaningful headway on breaking down barriers and complementing wider efforts to build more equal, effective collaborations to improve community wellbeing. We also don’t expect a partner to navigate this challenge alone. To collaboratively steward this project, we created a Steering Group with a range of sector perspectives and potential opportunities to test the tool in-the-real-world.
If you would like to get involved with this work, follow our next steps, or discuss any of these insights, please get in touch with charlotte.morgan@wcpp.org.uk
If you would like to tender for this work, or help us to disseminate the opportunity, please visit our tender page.