Tips on Collaboration

Collaboration results won't always be immediate, but continued presence, participation and communication will pay off in the long run. The following are some collaboration tips that may help your group get started or get them back on track if things get stalled.

"Collaboration is a mutually beneficial and well-defined relationship entered into by two or more organizations to achieve results they are more likely to achieve together than alone" (Winer 24).

Elements of Collaboration 

A number of essential elements of collaboration facilitates the provision of more responsive support services in communities. These include:

• DEFINING THE TARGET: In a collaborative model, the community -- however broadly or narrowly it is defined -- becomes the target for intervention. Community-wide perspective leads to a broader level of thinking about the complexities of social issues. Collaborative groups help identify issues and opportunities.
• DEFINING A COMMON GOAL: Successful collaboration is based on clearly stated outcome measures that everyone agrees are critical for demonstrating progress.
• PROMOTING THE ASSETS: A collaborative approach must focus on the assets of individuals, families, and communities.
• USING A SYSTEMS APPROACH: Training for all human service providers (teachers, health care practitioners, etc) must include basic and applied theories of systems design. Practitioners must understand the overlapping systems of how communities function.
• COMMITTING TO SYSTEMS REFORM: Individuals committed to a new vision of service delivery must be willing to abandon outdated practices and programs to make way for a new system which promotes the collaboration and integration of services.
• AIMING FOR COMMUNITY CONSENSUS: Skills for reaching a common vision are extremely important for all education, health and human service professionals.
• EVALUATING SUCCESS IN A NEW WAY: The old days of "bean-counting" to indicate successful interventions are slowly changing toward a more realistic goal of how to evaluate the process and progress of change. Does it matter that a family had had four visits to a social worker if there has been no change in the family's interactions? What if a family is functioning more successfully after only one visit to a social worker? We need to look at the nuances of change -- where progress is being made, where the "glue" of the program is located -- rather than depending on ineffective methods of evaluation.

Printed in the Idaho Head Start State Collaboration Project Newsletter: "Building Partnerships Building Families" September 1997

Example of collaborative goals

An example of a collaborative effort involving more than 100 national organizations is the Departments of Education's Family Involvement Partnership for Learning. A steering committee worked on a strategic plan with the following five goals:

1. Awareness - increasing community-wide understanding of the need to strengthen and promote family involvement
2. Commitment - developing shared commitments by families, schools, and communities to act jointly
3. Capacity Building - developing the capacity of families, schools, and communities to work together
4. Knowledge Development - identifying and developing knowledge on the use of programs and practices that successfully connect families, schools and communities
5. Performance Improvement - supporting the development of appropriate performance benchmarks that assess progress toward greater family involvement through family, school and community partnerships

For more information, write the Family Involvement Partnership for Learning, 600 Independence Ave., S.W. Washington DC 20202-8173.

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