"Stepping Stones for Initiating an Interagency Agreement

Plan your initial meetings, perhaps the first three, to involve such activities as:

• Surveying the community and surrounding area(s) for currently available services.
• Increasing the knowledge base concerning present services provided.
• Determining gaps and duplications in those services provided.
• Developing options for addressing gaps and duplications.
• Identifying needed services that are currently unavailable.

Do not address confidentiality!! As you address the last three activities above, the subject of confidentiality will repeatedly 'raise its ugly head.' Just put it off because you do not have to address it in this discovery stage.

Certainly, you want to develop and maintain a congenial relationship among agency participants. By meeting to address the above issues, you will be working as a group to determine 'common ground' and, at the same time, should be establishing an integrated support base for your project.

Once you have completed the above-listed activities, take those identified 'common ground' issues and concerns and brainstorm how these can be addressed through a collaborative approach. Then decide how they can be incorporated into, and enhanced by, the written agreement of the project. What will happen, hopefully, will be a 'common sense' approach to cooperative services--the sharing of services, resources, facilities, staff, etc.

Now comes the BIGGIE--sharing information! Don't limit your project to only sharing confidential information! (We hold general monthly meetings, which deal with common-interest topics and confidential case conferences dealing with specific children and families on an as-needed basis.)

The issue of confidentiality can be dealt with in several different ways. Begin the process by having each individual agency present their mandated requirements for confidentiality and share the forms and information that this includes. Then, as a group, decide how you want to develop the project's confidentiality procedures using areas of commonality and addressing the differences. Decide what, if any, forms will be developed and how these will be used by the project members.

Other options could be as follows:

• Appoint a committee to study confidentiality and determine the procedures to be followed by the project. This approach might be beneficial in addressing problems caused by uncooperative individuals who seem to have a 'thing' about the issue(s) of confidentiality. The committee can address the issue(s), write the confidentiality agreement statement(s), and return to the group for approval by the majority. Once it is approved at the local and state levels, the opposing individual(s) hopefully will abide by, and be comfortable with, the agreement.

• Let all involved agencies use their respective forms and abide by their own agency procedures in disclosing confidential information as they have clients who become actively involved through services of the project.

• Develop project procedures for confidentiality; those agencies that do not feel 100 percent comfortable can still meet their own agency requirements in addition to the procedures developed by the project.

An Additional Tip:

We exchange oral information only during case conferences. There is no exchange of printed materials, such as evaluation results, applications, medical histories, etc. Any participating agency must follow their respective agency regulations for obtaining another agency's written information on a specific client."