Training Guides
for the Head Start Learning Community:
Community Partnerships:
Working Together
Module 1
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| Contents | Preface
| Introduction
| Module 1
| Module 2
| Module 3
| Module 4 | |
What is Collaboration?
Handout 4: New Beginnings: One Community's Story
Instructions
The exercise is intended to help you recognize the stages and milestones of an effective community partnership. The passage below provides a profile on an actual partnership. In small groups, take a close look at this community's collaboration-building experiences by discussing New Beginnings' development and progress.
Getting Together
The collaborative began with a telephone call. Richard Jacobsen, then director of the county Department of Social Services, called Tom Payzant, superintendent of the San Diego City Schools. Jacobsen explained that the Department of Social Services and a few county colleagues had been talking about the need to address the range of family problems collaboratively.
That conversation lead to the initial 1988 meeting of 26 high-ranking public officials from four county offices. They represented the city of San Diego, San Diego County, the San Diego City Schools, and the San Diego Community College District. They all faced shrinking budgets and growing demand, but were responsible for only a piece of each family's services. They agreed that the fragmented approach just was not working. Something entirely different was needed.
Building Trust and Ownership
At that initial meeting, Jacobsen paid attention to seemingly details such as providing lunch and time to get to know one another. Before the group disbanded, it lined up for a group photograph. Jacobsen later sent copies to all the participants. These small gestures set the tone for a possible partnership.
.Shortly thereafter, the four agencies agreed to collaborate in order to develop a system that puts family needs before paperwork. The result was New Beginnings. No minimum financial contribution was required. However, each partner pledged, through a governance agreement, to contribute whatever they could in staff time, supplies, and services. Throughout the process, New Beginnings relied on grants from various foundations for startup costs.
Each agency's top executive committed to stay personally involved. Though top-level involvement was key, the group agreed that staff at all levels of the agencies had to be involved, as well. The conveners decided to invite the San Diego Housing Commission, San Diego School of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego Children's Hospital and Health Center, and the IBM Corporation to join the effort.
The nuts and bolts work of the new collaborative was driven by the New Beginnings Council, a group of mid- and high-level staff from each agency. Decisions were arrived at not through majority rule, but through consensus. Elected officials were not forgotten. Though the partners agreed to buffer the new collaborative from the political fray, they were careful to keep their elected officials aware of their work.
Developing a Strategic Plan
After two years of talking, the collaborative began to put in place the underpinnings for action. Working from the shared vision, the collaborative created a mission statement: "a tearing down of barriers, a giving up of turf, and a new way of doing business in order to help families." The collaborative talked about goals. It aimed to improve health, social and emotional well-being, and school achievement of children; self-sufficiency and parental involvement in families; and unity among institutions.
When it came to actually attempting such change, however, the collaborative needed help. The Stuart Foundation offered the consulting skills of Sidney Gardner, an expert on collaboration. Gardner asked the hard questions on issues such as target group selection, confidentiality, common eligibility, and funding that helped to push the collaborative ahead. Eventually, the collaborative decided to develop a preventive program targeted at elementary school children and their families. They went on to study the feasibility of providing services from many agencies at or near a school site. All the partners agreed to make in-kind contributions to offset the cost of the $217,000 study.
The study documented a key assumption of the partners. By sharing their databases, with information coded to protect families' privacy, the partners discovered just how many clients they had in common. Most importantly, the study provided a basis for reallocating existing dollars.
The partners agreed that to make the service system family centered, they needed to align smaller units of workers with specific neighborhoods. These workers would remain in their home agencies but comprise an extended team collaborating with agency workers and others in the field.
Taking Action
In September 1991, after three years of planning, the partners opened New Beginnings Center for Children and Families, where representatives from a score of agencies act as family service advocates; broker public services; and provide some direct services such as immunizations, school registration, and counseling. Instead of working side-by-side, they work together.
Perhaps the greatest challenge was building a team. After months of working together, the potential of the partnership slowly began to become apparent. Resource teacher Sally Skartvedt says, "As we get to know each other, we feel more confidence and trust in each other and respect for each other." Full scale implementation of the mission required detailed interagency agreements spelling out workers' roles and the information they are able to share.
New Beginnings also took on the issue of confidentiality. The group discovered that procedures, not law, are the major barrier to information-sharing. To overcome these obstacles, the collaborative planned to provide additional training to staff. The collaborative also developed a release form that families would sign to allow the sharing of confidential information among the partner agencies.
The Result
Silvia Gonzalez's daughter, Liliana, was getting ready to leave Head Start and begin kindergarten at Hamilton Elementary in inner-city San Diego. Silvia wanted to sign up Liliana for the free lunch program. However, she was not looking forward to filling out another application. Then one day, a letter came in the mail. Because Silvia was already in the food stamp program, the letter read, her children were automatically eligible for free school lunches. The letter was one tangible sign of New Beginnings' effort to remake San Diego's education and human service bureaucracies.
Copyright © 1998 Head Start Publications Management Center
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