The dynamics of governance and system change: the case of local collaborative relations to support adults with complex needs

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Spours, J, 2021. The dynamics of governance and system change: the case of local collaborative relations to support adults with complex needs. PhD, Nottingham Trent University.

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Abstract

Collaboration between organisations and actors in the provision of public services has long been recognised as a self-evident virtue and a key component in the response to increased levels of service fragmentation and specialisation. The identification of approximately 60,000 adults within England and Wales that combine needs around homelessness, mental health, offending and substance misuse has led to the recognition that traditional models of service provision have been unable to adequately respond to these articulations of 'adult complex needs'. It is in this context that there has been a renewed interest in the promotion of innovative strategies and structures to re-conceptualise collaborative working at both central and local levels often embedded within broader calls for 'system change'. This research seeks to add new knowledge to an emerging group of literatures around institutional and professional responses to complex needs through the lens of the governance of public services. In doing so it looks to explore the intersecting relationships between collaboration and innovation at the local level in the context of powerful influences from the national state conceptualised through a Gramscian-influenced model comprising ideas of an extended state, governmental state, civil society and the integral state. The complexity of these relationships is researched through a case-study strategy focused on a city-based, multi-year pilot project, referred to as the Case-Study Partnership (CSP) and its collaborative ecology. The perceptions and reported behaviours of local actors, located in their differing relations to the governmental state are reported from interviews conducted over the period 2017-2019. The thesis argues that working within the tensions of governance 'verticalities' and 'horizontalities' led to a series of hybridised and adaptive collaborative behaviours, conceptualised as 'adaptive system management'. This hybridised outcome, comprising a series of dominant and subordinate relationships, was to impact the possibilities and horizons of local system change to support the adult complex needs user-service group.

Item Type:	Thesis
Creators:	Spours, J.
Date:	August 2021
Rights:	This work is the intellectual property of the author. You may copy up to five per cent of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed to the owner(s) of the Intellectual Property Rights.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	05 Nov 2021 15:12
Last Modified:	05 Nov 2021 15:12
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/44630