By Linda G. Kunesh
Director, Early Childhood & Family Education, NCREL
Note: This article is adapted from an issue of NCREL's Policy Briefs (Report 3, 1993), Integrating Community Services for Young Children and Their Families.
Communities face a host of problems that threaten the physical, social, and individual well-being of their members. Increases in unemployment, high school drop-out rates, divorce, teen pregnancy, substance abuse, and domestic and gang violence are just a sample of the difficult issues that communities must confront. Research indicates that these problems are interrelated at a variety of levels and in complex ways (Schorr, 1988).
If problems are interrelated, our solutions need to be also. Services must be integrated and multidimensional - they must be coordinated to attack many problems at once rather than one problem at a time. Unfortunately, the service delivery system often is fragmented, one-dimensional, noncontinuous, rigid, and underfunded. In short, our solutions to problems that affect large numbers of our population are often inconsistent with the nature of the problems themselves.
The Need to Work Together
To address both community problems and problems in the service delivery system, many agencies are reworking their organizational thought and practice to emphasize interagency cooperation, coordination, and collaboration. Educational, health, and social service agencies are beginning to recognize that only by working together can they provide services that are integrated rather than fragmented, multidimensional rather than one-dimensional, and continuous rather than sporadic. Still, for agencies accustomed to competition, boundary protection, and categorical funding, recognizing the need to work together is much easier than actually practicing it.
Communities must recognize their responsibility to and self-interest in the experiences of their children and youth. Thus, the efficiency of efforts aimed at caring for our children and youth in healthy and appropriate ways will depend, in part, on the ability of parents, families, schools, service providers, and community organizations to work together toward this end.
Changing Direction Toward a Profamily System
If communities are going to support children, youth, and families, then new ways of crafting service delivery efforts must be found. Efforts must go beyond cooperation and coordination to collaboration.
In 1991, the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services convened 26 practitioners, researchers, and scholars from around the country who were developing innovative service delivery for children, youth, and families. The experiences of these individuals, collectively called the School-Linked Integrated Services Study Group, were captured in a guide for integrating services, Together We Can: A Guide for Crafting a Profamily System of Education and Human Services (Melaville, Blank, and Asayesh, 1993).
Basic to the guide is the concept of systems change - "a revision of the ways that people and institutions think, behave, and use their resources to affect fundamentally the types, quality, and degree of service delivery to children and families" (p. vii). The Study Group believes that collaborative strategies are the key to systems change.
In a collaborative strategy, partners share a common vision, establish common goals, and agree to use their personal and institutional power to achieve them. Partners have authority to speak for their institutions or the segments of the community that they represent; to commit resources (human, material, and financial); and to alter existing policies and procedures to obtain measurable and attainable objectives. Finally, "they accept individual and collective responsibility for outcomes" (Melaville, Blank, and Asayesh, 1993, p. 15).
Inherent in a profamily system are new working relationships, operating assumptions, and high-quality services that support families and help them reach their potential. While the specifics of such a system will vary according to the needs of each community and the availability of resources, a profamily system will generally have the following characteristics. It will be:
Effective Initiatives to
Change Service Delivery Systems
Throughout the country, in urban and rural areas, numerous communities and counties have formed collaboratives and have begun initiatives to create more responsive services for children, youth, and families. While none have fully implemented a "communitywide profamily system," their combined efforts suggest that effective service integration initiatives share certain characteristics:
Guidelines for Effective Collaboration
Many factors are likely to influence the success or failure of interagency collaborations, and no two collaboratives will progress in exactly the same way or within the same time frame. Each effort must find a way to proceed that is consistent with its unique circumstances and composition. Nevertheless, the literature on collaboration offers some suggested guidelines that have wide applicability:
Finally - and perhaps most important - remember that change begins with individuals, not institutions. It is essential that agency representatives be allowed to take the necessary time from routine responsibilities to meet and interact with one another so that trust and respect on an individual level can be generated. Personal interactions across agencies nurture trusting relationships that will sustain the growing pains naturally associated with systemic change.
Clearly, the road to success involves a new vision that encompasses not only children, youth, and families, but the roles that schools, communities, and service agencies must play in their healthy development. Rearing and educating healthy children and youth who are able to succeed in school and society require new strategies for communitywide commitment to address the needs of the whole family.
References and Resources
Boyer, E.L. (1991). Ready to learn: A mandate for the nation. Princeton: The Carnegie Foundation for the Ad- vancement of Teaching.
Bruner, C. (1991). Thinking collaboratively: Ten questions and answers to help policy makers improve children's services. Washington, DC: Education and Human Services Consortium (c/o IEL, 1001 Connecticut Avenue, NW, #310, Washington, DC 20036).
Melaville, A., Blank, M.J., & Asayesh, G. (1993). Together we can: A guide for crafting a profamily system of education and human services. Available from Superintendent of Documents, P.O. Box 371954, Pittsburgh, PA 1525-7954. (Specify stock #065-000-00563-8.)
Melaville, A. with Blank, M.J. (1991). What it takes: Structuring interagency partnerships to connect children and families with comprehensive services. Washington DC: Education and Human Services Consortium (c/o IEL, 1001 Connecticut Avenue, NW, #310, Washington, DC 20036).
Midwest Regional Center for Drug-Free Schools and Communities (MRC). (1992). Preparing Students for Drug-Free Lifestyles, Program 6 of the NCREL video series Schools That Work: The Research Advantage (videotape and guidebook). Available from MRC, 1900 Spring Road, Suite 300, Oak Brook, IL 60521.
National Association of State Boards of Education [NASBE]. (1991). Caring communities: Supporting young children and families. The Report of the National Task Force on School Readiness. Alexandria, VA: Author.
Nelson, D. (Winter, 1993). Found difficult and left untried: The governance necessary for service integration, A.E.C. focus.
North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. (1992). Meeting Children's Needs and Integrating Community Services (videotapes and guidebooks) and Every child is the community's child - agency collaboration for school success (Rural Audio Journal, Vol. 1, No. 3). Available from NCREL, 1120 Diel Road, Suite 200, Oak Brook, IL 60563.
Schorr, L.B. (1988). Within our reach. New York: Anchor Press, Doubleday.
Copyright © 1995:
Midwest Regional Center for
Drug-Free Schools & Communities
North Central
Regional Educational Laboratory
Contact: info@ncrel.org
Posted on March 27, 1995
URL: http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/envrnmnt/sa/4-1integ.htm