Effective Strategies for Interagency Collaboration

1. Effective Strategies for Interagency Collaboration Beth M. Harrison

2. What is Interagency Collaboration? • A mutually beneficial and well-defined relationship entered into by two or more [individuals or] organizations to achieve common goals.

3. What is Interagency Collaboration? • Includes a commitment to: • a definition of mutual relationships and goals; • a jointly developed structure and shared responsibility; • mutual authority and accountability for success; • sharing of resources and rewards.  

4. Why Collaboration is Important • Most human services are crisis-oriented. • Services are generally administered by dozens of rigid and distinct separate agencies and programs and each have their own: • categories that reflect a particular focus • sources of funding • guidelines • accountability requirements • rules governing expenditure of funds

5. Why Collaboration is Important • Agencies with pronounced dissimilarities in professional orientation and institutional mandates seldom see each other as allies • Sufficient funds not available to provide necessary prevention, support, & treatment services to make lasting difference for young people who must overcome multiple problems and years of neglect.

6. Efforts at service integration/collaboration not new • Such efforts have existed in this country even before the start of the twentieth century • Example = settlement houses of late 1800s working together to identify problems and otherwise offer comprehensive services to families.

7. Recent Legislative Emphasis • Workforce Investment Act – reauthorization emphasizes collaboration between WIA, TANF, and One-Stops • Rehabilitation Act - mandates interagency collaboration between the vocational rehabilitation agency and educational agencies • Individuals with Disabilities Education Act – by age 16, a statement of interagency responsibilities and linkages is developed

8. Some essential elements of comprehensive service delivery made possible through interagency collaboration: • Easy access to wide array of prevention, treatment, and support services, no matter who provides those services • Techniques to ensure that appropriate services are received and are adjusted to meet the changing needs of youth and families • A focus on the whole family

9. Some essential elements of comprehensive service delivery made possible through interagency collaboration: • Families are empowered within an atmosphere of mutual respect • Continuity in delivery of services and support, with trust-building relationships between workers and family members • Emphasis upon improved outcomes for children, youth, and families, based upon realistic but high expectations for achievement • (List adapted from Melaville with Blank, 1991)

10. To determine whether interagency collaboration is the "solution" to the lack of flexible, comprehensive, and effective services in your community, ask: 1).Is the result I want to achieve beyond my organization's ability, acting singly, to achieve? (Do I need help?) 2). Are there other organizations and agencies that desire similar results with whom my organization can coordinate to better achieve the results I want? (Is there someone who can help?)

11. 3. Will this collaboration also help other organizations achieve the results they want? (Will they want to help?) 4. Can I afford to spend the time required to develop a collaborative relationship with those organizations? (Is it worth the effort?) 5. Is my organization, from top to bottom, ready to make the needed changes in our operations in order to collaborate with others? (Can I make use of help when it is provided?)

12. These questions underscore: • Need to identify common interests among the organizations that will be expected to collaborate. • Need to assure that each organization has something to gain from the process. • Fact that collaborative planning takes resources and time as the potential collaborating organizations have to learn about and establish trust with one another. • Recognition that interagency collaboration is a means to an end and not an end in itself.

13. Guidelines for Effective Collaborative Planning • Involve all key players - Commitment to change must be broad-based and should include the participation of not only those with the power to negotiate change, but representatives from the families (including children) whose lives will be affected. • Choose a realistic strategy - Partners need to chose a strategy that reflects the priorities of service providers, the public, and key policymakers; the availability of resources; and local needs.

14. Guidelines for Effective Collaborative Planning • Establish a shared vision - Cooperative ventures are based on a recognition of shared clients. Collaborative partnerships must create a shared vision of better outcomes for the children and families they both serve. • Agree to disagree - Participants need to establish a communication process that gives them permission to disagree and uses conflict/resolution as a constructive means of moving forward. • Make promises you can keep - Setting attainable objectives, especially in the beginning, is necessary to create momentum and a sense of accomplishment.

15. Guidelines for Effective Collaborative Planning • Build ownership at all levels - commitment to change must extend throughout the organizational structure of each participating agency. Inservice staff training should allow staff time to air feelings about proposed changes and to predict resulting outcomes of the changes. • Avoid "red herrings" - Partners should not let "technical difficulties" impede the development of a shared vision. Most differences usually result from misunderstandings or from policies that can be changed or otherwise accommodated. They should not be allowed to become convenient excuses for partners not fully committed to working together.

16. Guidelines for Effective Collaborative Planning • Keep your eyes on the prize - It is easy for collaborative initiatives to become so bogged down in the difficulty of day-to-day operations and disagreements that they lose sight of the forest for the trees. We are striving for better outcomes and more successful futures for our children and families. • Institutionalize change - Participants must incorporate partnership objectives into their own institutional mandates and budgets, and earmark the permanent flow of adequate resources to keep joint efforts going. • Publicize your success - Interagency partnerships are a promising conduit for the large-scale creation and delivery of comprehensive services to children and families. Well-publicized results that consistently meet reasonable objectives will go far to attract the funding necessary to replicate and expand innovation.

17. Strategies for Engaging Families and Communities • If services are to be more flexible, comprehensive, and effective, workers at the frontline-teachers, social workers, health practitioners, and community service workers-must be supported in their work with children and their families. • This support may require a redefinition of job responsibilities, restructuring of organizational support for these workers, and retraining to assume these new responsibilities. • From the perspective of children, youth, and families, successful interagency collaboration should mean that their needs are identified and met in a manner that involves a partnership with the family.

18. Frontline service providers must be prepared to: • Listen to and understand needs of whole family • Establish relationships with children and families that allow them to meet these needs • Develop and implement strategies that empower families to make appropriate decisions leading to self sufficiency • Know the resources available within the community to meet special needs which they cannot be meet • Communicate with other service providers who can provide resources to family • Establish teamwork with other workers when children and families need services from several organizations at once • Build community relationships and connections with organizations and individuals who can help support children and families

19. To be successful, frontline workers must: • Receive training so they can respond to a wide variety of child and family needs • Have access to professional advice and support on new issues as they arise, including training in assuming non-educational roles • Have job expectations which recognize the time it takes to communicate and coordinate with families and children and with other workers in the system • Be treated with professional respect and rewarded for using discretion • Have job expectations which recognize the time it takes to identify and involve community organizations and individuals in supporting children and families

20. "Collaboration involves parent and professional, professional and child, parent and parent, professional and professional, agency and parent, federal and state administrators, and others. Collaboration will not look the same for all families and professionals. Some collaborative relationships will be simple to develop, others will be much more complex and demanding. Collaboration must be developed between and among all of us." • -- Mattessich, P. and Money, B. (1992). Collaboration: What Makes It Work, p. 7.

21. Why Collaboration is Important • No one can do it alone. Improving the quality of life and the education of children with disabilities and their families requires the collective knowledge, skills, experience and expertise of all family members and professionals. It requires that the community and all service systems work together to achieve the goals of the child and family." • -- Ibid.