Glenda Cochrum

Glenda Cochrum, coordinator of the Fulton County KIDS Project at Fulton County Schools in Hickman, Kentucky, emphasizes that members of collaboratives need to develop a working relationship and cultivate a level of trust before addressing confidentiality concerns. Excerpted from the video series Schools That Work: The Research Advantage, videoconference #8, Integrating Community Services (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1992).

"I think that one of the reasons your agency group sometimes fails to get off the ground and being able to formulate services for people is because they deal with confidentiality issues too quickly. You have to have a trust base or a level of trust there before you can even talk about it. Some agency people are very adamant that they will not exchange confidential information, and if you try to deal with that issue too quickly when you're trying to pull together multiagency people, then you're practically killing your project before you get it off the ground. We work for three to four months before we ever actually let confidentiality become a conversation, get on the agenda, so to speak, because we knew that if we did it too quickly, that we would never be able to get past that barrier, so if you can form a foundation for that project. If your members began to become committed to that goal, then once you reach confidentiality issues, you're going to be so committed that you're going to keep going, and that's pretty much going to happen to us, by the time we got to it, w e said, 'We are going to get past this,' and we did. Part of the way we did was limiting the amount of information we've exchanged. We do it only orally and not in writing."

This Critical Issue summary was written by Robin Fleming and Stephanie Lubin, program specialists with the Center for School and Community Development at North Central Regional Educational Laboratory.

Date posted: 1998