A new year and 20 years of collaborating for impact 

In her latest TFN column, our Chief Officer Sara Redmond marks 20 years of the ALLIANCE and looks ahead to a future built on hope.

A new year brings a feeling of mystery, of not knowing what might unfold. I never used to enjoy the start of a new year but the older I get, the more acceptance I have that change and uncertainty is part of life. A new year offers permission to reflect on what has been, and to think carefully about what we want to carry forward and what we might do differently.

This year feels particularly significant. It marks 20 years since the inception of the ALLIANCE. This anniversary gives us a reason to pause and reflect. Longevity alone is not a measure of success, particularly in the third sector. Many organisations in the sector rightly hold an ambition to work towards a future where they are no longer needed. Nevertheless, an anniversary does offer a chance to consider the impact we have made, what has changed around us, and what remains stubbornly unresolved.

As part of that reflection, we are creating space to come together this year – to collectively look back and, just as importantly, to look forward. Our anniversary conference ‘Hope to Action’ is shaped around that same question; how we build on the progress, hold onto hope in challenging times, and translate hope into meaningful action. It’s an opportunity to listen, learn and imagine what comes next, together.

There is a particular privilege working for a third sector membership organisation. Our role is unapologetically collaborative. It brings people together to create inclusive, meaningful and productive dialogue – and, at times, productive disagreements. It’s this collective effort that has driven some of the most important innovations in health and social care in Scotland.

Looking back at our collective impact, one of the most striking shifts has been how policy-making and service design are understood, and who is recognised as having expertise. The involvement of lived experience in decision-making has moved from the margins towards the mainstream. There is still lots to do, but the discourse has changed, and that matters.

The importance of people’s voices has been woven through the ALLIANCE’s work from the outset. Our early work on self management positioned lived experience as a form of leadership, culminating in the development of the strategy for self management. That commitment continues across our programmes. This is evident in Getting to Know GIRFEC, a programme developed with and by parents of disabled children to raise awareness of their rights. It was central with ALISS, which set out to democratise not only access to information about community-based health and wellbeing support, but also who curates that information. Looking ahead, the next frontier is to embed lived experience participation more deeply within democratic institutions themselves.

The ALLIANCE has worked with members and partners with a strong focus on empowering people to understand their rights, to be aware of power dynamics, and to see their individual and collective capacity to create real social change. The challenge now, is to move beyond policy frameworks and embed human rights into the everyday culture of institutions; as practice, not just a principle. Done well, this has the potential to rebuild trust at a time when it is feeling fragile.

As we enter a new year, and our third decade as an organisation, that feels like an opportunity. The next chapter of the ALLIANCE will be written as the last 20 years have been; through collaboration, courage and a continued commitment to amplifying voices that often go unrecognised. If the past has shown us anything, it is that lasting change happens when people are involved and valued. That’s a principle worth carrying with us into the year ahead, and far beyond it.

This piece first appeared in TFN’s January edition.

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