Leading a governance and leadership reset for an alliance in Torbay working with people with multiple complex needs. We helped move it from a traditional leadership style to genuine shared ownership.
The challenge
The Growth in Action (GiA) Alliance brings together Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, Torbay Council and a range of voluntary and community sector partners to support people with multiple complex needs across housing, health and substance use. Originally known as the Multiple Complex Needs Alliance (MCNA), the partnership had reached a point where its governance, leadership and ways of working needed to be reviewed and reset. Ideas Alliance was commissioned to lead this reset.
What we did
We began with a diagnostic review of the alliance, carried out jointly by Helen Sharp and Dawn Hart, to understand what was working, where tensions sat, and what kind of support would help the alliance move forward.
From that diagnostic, a sustained programme of support followed. We strengthened governance and decision-making structures, Dominic Williamson helped to drive the alliance strategy and governance improvements as interim Alliance Director, and ran facilitated sense-making sessions with staff, volunteers and people using services, resulting in a refreshed Strategy Implementation Plan.
We also provided ongoing facilitation for the alliance’s Strategy Group and Joint Operational Group (JOG) through regular check-ins and “huddles,” including a series of 100-day improvement challenges on transparency, communication, joint working and shared referral processes.
A defining moment in the reset was the creation of a shared governance and accountability framework, developed with our support by the Strategy Group and JOG to clarify where decisions and authority sat across the alliance and set them on the path of a distributed leadership approach. This sat alongside a jointly owned performance dashboard.
We also supported the alliance’s engagement with its commissioning and oversight structures, including briefing materials for Torbay’s Overview and Scrutiny Board, and put together a sense-making slide deck and supporting materials, later shared with Torbay Council to inform its own independent review of the alliance’s progress.
Our impact
Fourteen months in, the alliance was visibly operating with more energy, openness and shared ownership than at the outset. Alliance organisations felt able to independently drive forward shared consent forms, induction materials, referral processes and joint communications work – activity that had moved from being facilitator-led to being owned by the alliance’s own staff and managers.
The strength of the reset was recognised externally too. In late 2025, Torbay Council commissioned an independent review of the Growth in Action Alliance’s progress and explicitly recognised Ideas Alliance’s vantage point on the advantages and challenges of working in alliances.
The relationships built through the work have endured well beyond the formal engagement, with alliance leads continuing to draw on Ideas Alliance’s perspective on governance and best practice as the alliance has matured.
