From rhetoric to practice : the implementation of an early intervention program partnership from an NGO perspective

This paper reports on research that tracks the development of one example of an Early Intervention Program (EIP) partnership between government and non-government family-support agencies that deliver services through an integrated interagency service model. The paper presents the perspectives of the non-government organisation (NGO) side of the partnership as a model of service-delivery over a fifteen-month period. It describes how, in practice, a model of partnership looks to NGOs, highlighting their experiences of the partnership from their initial expectations to a growing disillusionment in the process for delivery and implementation of the EIP. The conceptual framework set out in ‘Collaborative Advantage and Collaborative Inertia’, developed by Huxham and Vangen (2005), is used to identify the tensions and dilemmas that arose for the NGOs and the different meanings that the partnership process had for the various NGOs with responsibilities for implementing it.