The Orkney Community Learning and Development (CLD) Partnership has worked diligently over time to build confidence, trust and resilience within the partnership. Through this, it has developed and nurtured a genuine shared ownership and ensured effective progress of the CLD Partner’s Plan.

Partners are committed to working collaboratively to reduce duplication and meet local needs. They have a clear focus on continuous improvement using self-evaluation, a realistic and achievable CLD Partners Plan, a tracker system, and effective reporting and scrutiny processes.

With a wide range of CLD partners who are committed to the partnership and who are jointly advocating for CLD, the partnership realised that it needed to gain further buy-in and recognition of the value of CLD from wider partnerships and strategic leaders.

Through improved governance and closer linkages with community planning staff, the valuable contribution of CLD in progressing actions and supporting positive outcomes for learners has become more visible and highly valued internally and externally. Due to this clear outcome-focused approach and the constant messaging on the value of CLD, the recognition of CLD’s contribution to shared priorities across Orkney has increased. CLD representation is now well established through a variety of strategic partnerships, with the CLD sector now being brought in to contribute to wider plans and outcomes.

As a result, CLD is well recognised, understood and valued across Orkney. The most senior leaders have a clear understanding of the role and function of CLD and where this aligns with, and contributes to, strategic priorities. They value how CLD is leading to improved outcomes for learners and communities and this increased recognition of CLD has helped strengthen and grow CLD across Orkney.

The improvement issue

During a period of reduced CLD capacity and resources, alongside an increased need, it became more important than ever to stop and remove any duplication of work. There was a need to work smarter together to meet local needs. Leaders needed to ensure the CLD Partnership was stronger than the sum of its parts and that by working together on shared actions, they would achieve much more than they could working in isolation.

Whilst the partnership worked effectively and partners were committed to working together, the Council’s CLD Service had previously taken a stronger lead than other members of the partnership.

In addition, although CLD staff and partners had an inherent belief in, and understanding of, the values and impact that CLD can have, more needed to be done to ensure that CLD was valued and understood at all levels, both strategically and across the wider community.

To do this, the CLD Partnership needed to communicate a consistent message about the benefits of CLD. It needed to be able to demonstrate the value of its work and show the real impact and positive outcomes for learners and communities.

The CLD Partners Plan is one of many plans across the council. However, it was vital that it was positioned around and aligned with other priorities and plans, to improve efficiency and ensure coordinated delivery across Orkney.

What Orkney Council did

The CLD Plan 2021-24 was developed out of the need to coordinate work and reduce duplication to meet growing needs at a time of reduced resources. The CLD Plan became a unifying focus for the partnership.

It was important that the plan was manageable and realistic. Because the Partnership was working in rapidly changing times, leaders agreed that the plan would be reviewed annually. As a result, the plan has become much more manageable, focused and deliverable.

To ensure that the Partnership made effective progress on the plan, it created a range of subgroups from within it. Each subgroup is chaired by a different partner, which feeds back to the wider CLD Partnership every two months. The impact of the subgroups includes the rapid progress on key areas and actions within the plan. The subgroups also resulted in strengthened leadership, ownership and responsibility of shared priorities that were more equally shared among partners.

The CLD Partnership now regularly monitors, reviews, and self-evaluates to measure progress. Findings from this inform future planning to ensure support and challenge is embedded as part of the CLD planning cycle. The ability to better evidence the outcomes of its CLD work and the difference made to people’s lives has increased the recognition of the contribution of CLD to other plans.

The CLD plan was aligned to the community plan and community planning structures. Through clear evidence and regular reporting on progress and achievement of outcomes, the role and impact of the CLD sector has become much more apparent.

CLD partners have worked hard to increase CLD’s visibility more strategically. For example, the CLD partnership has been rebranded with new promotional material. As a result, CLD has become a central and valued partner locally and strategically. CLD has expanded over the last few years in a drive to provide more innovative and effective ways to achieve positive outcomes for learners and communities.

The CLD Partnership undertook a training needs analysis for the CLD sector and developed a programme of training to meet local needs. This has grown and developed to deliver wider training opportunities across the Orkney community, with partners learning from the CLD Partnership to influence and develop their organisations both locally and nationally.

What the sustained impact has been

There is more trust and shared ownership within the CLD Partnership. The partnership plan is owned by all partners and not solely by one partner or service. Partners recognise the benefit of the CLD partnership and collaboration to achieve positive outcomes for individuals and communities.

Improved and more robust governance arrangements, alongside committed partners and effective practices to evidence outcomes have ensured that all partners take responsibility on delivery of a more realistic and needs-led CLD plan. The introduction of cyclical self-evaluation and quality assurance processes have allowed partners to be clear on progress and focus on forward planning and continuous improvement.

Over time, CLD’s reputation has been strengthened, with the sector now recognised as a central player that consistently delivers and supports learners and communities to achieve. As a result, all areas of the CLD service have grown through securing additional funding from a range of sources to help increase the learning offer.

The CLD Partnership has become larger than the sum of its parts. It is no longer a collection of people coming together to create and deliver on a CLD plan. The CLD Partnership is developing and influencing the work of wider organisations and partnerships. As a result, CLD representation is now being requested on many other partnerships, both operational and strategic.

The strengthened role and increased recognition of CLD has led to additional investment from a range of sources into the council’s CLD and employability team. This has resulted in an increase in CLD provision.