Under this Labour government, while structures have been put in place to facilitate partnership, the need for incentives has also been acknowledged, as recorded in Partnership in action (DoH, 1998a). Traditionally, incentives have taken the form of additional targeted allocations from central government, such as the Mental Illness Specific Grant, Winter Pressures Money and the Community Care Challenge Fund. Partnership in action recognised that these initiatives have stimulated innovative service provision in priority areas and that important lessons have been learnt. At the same time it emphasised the need to ensure that joint working becomes part of core business rather than a peripheral activity. It therefore proposed to abolish the long-standing incentives of Joint Finance, incorporating this money in future within unified budgets.

Taken alongside the emphasis on greater organisational integration, this might be thought to imply that ‘special projects’ have served their purpose and will no longer have a key role to play in promoting collaborative working. On the other hand the cost-effective opportunities that project money offers to develop and demonstrate new ways of working remain politically attractive, an argument supported by recent evidence from an ADSS Report on details of 185 Winter Pressures Money partnership schemes (Healy, 1999). According to Martin and Sanderson (1999) pilot projects have an important role in evidence-based policy making which is of continuing relevance and short-term limited arrangements will inevitably retain their attraction as long as resources remain constrained (Springett, 1995). From a political perspective pilot projects also offer a relatively non-contentious opportunity to experiment with new approaches that may seem threatening to mainstream services. The introduction of the Social Services Modernisation Fund (DoH, 1998b) confirmed that there would continue to be opportunities for this kind of project-based partnership working.

The recognition of potential marginalisation, discussed in the Introduction, is an important point to note, and suggests that it is time for a critical appraisal of both the potential and the limitations of projects to promote the concept of partnership. This chapter will explore this issue through the experiences of two collaborative projects, one between the local NHS and PSS in the field of continuing care for older people (Charnley et al, 1998) and the other between the local NHS, PSS and education department concerning provision for ‘cared-for’ children with attachment difficulties (Williamson, 1999), both financed from short-term targeted funding.