The OODP has intentionally supported ASOs in partnership development and collaboration since 2009. Since then, the sector has developed significant capacity in this area. Today, however, new opportunities and challenges exist in terms of partnership and collaboration. Service users have to access multiple organizations, across different sectors and systems, to get their needs met. System planning and transformation is requiring new ways of understanding how to work with others (e.g., as recently seen in the emergence of Ontario Health Teams). And, as service demands outweigh available resources, meaningful partnership and collaboration can often feel difficult to do well.
OODP has a greater role to play in fostering partnership and collaboration between ASOs and HIV-funded programs. This is about both supporting them to deliver better services, and to be more effective agents of needed systemic change. This can be achieved through offering skill development and facilitating partnership planning. We also know we can and must offer varied spaces for organizations to determine collective action to reform the sector and systems they operate within.
Lastly, how OODP itself partners and collaborates with other capacity building programs, both within the sector and in other sectors, is important to create a more seamless organizational development experience for our clients and allow us to also contribute to collective system change efforts. Clients want this of us, and we want it too. Through using partnership and collaboration as a tool to strengthen the work of both OODP and our clients, OODP can act as a catalyst to ensure Ontarians are served by a stronger HIV sector and a more just system.
