A Developmental Framework for Collaboration in Child-Serving Agencies

Collaboration for the purpose of interdependent problem solving represents a fundamental reform of services for children with serious emotional disturbance and their families, which have typically been categorical, poorly coordinated, costly, overly restrictive, and frequently provided outside of the children's home communities. This article presents a developmental framework for collaboration that is based on the experience of families, service providers, administrators, and community members who have been involved in local collaborative processes in their own communities. The framework provides those interested in building collaboration a clear identification of the stages of collaborative development, defining characteristics of each stage, collaborative activities typical of that stage, and identification of the catalyst for change to the next stage. The results of this project indicate that while well-developed professional collaboration is a necessary component of collaboration, it is not sufficient in and of itself. The sites participating in this project related their experiences in building collaborative processes to both the development of strong interagency collaborations and the development of family participation. Their experience indicates that these two processes must be fully developed and woven together to achieve the goal of true collaboration.