Negotiate with other agencies for a specific task or area of work

For this assessment criterion, you will be required to negotiate with professionals in other agencies to agree to a specific task or area of work. This could be related to launching a joint initiative, achieving positive outcomes for service users or exchanging information. It is also important to document roles, responsibilities, accountabilities and procedures when working with others.

Understand the range of professionals and other agencies that they may work with when carrying out their own role and responsibilities

As part of your role, you will work in partnership with several other health and care professionals. This can include:

• GPs
• Nurses
• Dieticians
• Social workers
• Psychologists
• Physiotherapists
• Occupational therapists
• Speech and language therapists
• Advocates
• Pharmacists

In addition, you will work collaboratively with services users, their families and informal carers.

Work collaboratively with professionals and other agencies to agree objectives of any partnership

For partnerships to be effective, all stakeholders must agree and commit to common objectives. Once agreed, they should be documented. This will ensure that everybody pulls in the same direction and can provide a point of reference if there are disagreements.

Work with professionals and other agencies to agree on how tasks and responsibilities will be allocated

When objectives are agreed upon, a plan of action should be formulated and agreed to by all stakeholders. This will include the allocation and distribution of tasks, responsibilities and accountabilities amongst the group to ensure that each stakeholder works within their area of expertise and that work is not duplicated. The allocation of tasks should be fair and equitable to ensure that everyone can contribute and nobody becomes overwhelmed.

Ensure that objectives agreed with professionals and other agencies are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound)

When agreeing on objectives with others, you should ensure that they follow the SMART format. This means that they will be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. Setting objectives in this way can help to motivate the group and increase performance. Furthermore, it means that progress towards objectives can be tracked and the achievement of objectives can be quantified.

Work with professionals and other agencies to agree on procedures and ways of working to ensure that objectives can be met

To facilitate effective partnership working and the achievement of objectives, all parties should develop and agree on the policies and procedures that will be used. This could include procedures about how you share information, how you evaluate the effectiveness of the partnership and the communication channels. A good example of this is the joint working agreement between the Care Quality Commission and the Association of Directors Of Adult Social Services.

Work with professionals and other agencies to agree timelines for monitoring progress and evaluating achievements

Using the SMART method, objectives will be time-bound, with set deadlines. For longer-term goals, you may agree on interim objectives or milestones to breaking the project down into more manageable chunks. Timelines should be challenging but realistic and take into account the resources available.