Interagency Collaboration
Bruner* states that research about interagency collaboration is important because of the following factors:
- 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.
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
- 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, years of neglect.
*Bruner, C.; Kunesh, L.G.; Knuth, R.A. “What Does Research Say About Interagency Collaboration?”
http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/stw_esys/8agcycol.htm Links