Collaboration is the process by which agencies formally commit themselves on a long-term basis to work together to accomplish a common mission.
Collaboration brings previously separate organizations into a new working structure that requires joint planning, training, implementation, and evaluation. This partnership also necessitates a sharing of resources, power, and authority. It requires organizations to blend their strengths as well as negotiate their differences with an underlying attitude of trust.
The goal of the partnership is comprehensive services for families that improve family outcomes.
- Texas Head Start State Collaboration Project, 1992
Progress has been made on both the state and federal levels to move toward greater collaboration between Head Start and other programs that provide services to low-income children and families. However, some barriers still exist and, whenever possible, communities should work together to create a common vision across all early care and education programs. We must be committed to improving collaborations with the intent to create a system that is more responsive to the needs of working parents and that supports opportunities for children to participate in high-quality programs that involve communities in the planning and implementation of the services.
With the realization of welfare reform across the nation, states have increased their investments in and placed emphasis on programs that provide child care and development assistance to families. Thus, there is an increased need for greater collaboration among all programs that provide services to children in an effort to improve child well being and help to move more families toward self-sufficiency. Head Start provides a vision of comprehensive services that all early childhood programs can benefit from, including a focus on the entire family, links to health and social services, and a well-developed staff training system. With its long history of providing comprehensive child and family development and services to low-income children and families, Head Start is recognized as a model program throughout the country and should play an essential role in collaboration.
Meeting Families’ Changing Needs.
In its 35-year history, Head Start has developed many successful practices in parent involvement and family support services. This family focus practice reflects the interest in approaches to a child’s development that promote learning in the context of home, school, and community.
As families needs change, it is critical that early care and education providers come together to provide comprehensive full day services to low-income families who are working and/ or in training programs. The process for helping families become self-sufficient involves a careful blend of providing needed services, reducing family isolation, expanding social support networks, and giving families an opportunity to contribute to and be valued by their community.
Many early care and education programs serve low-income families who are struggling to provide children with basic necessities and a warm, caring home. The majority of these families are living at or close to the poverty level and a substantial proportion receive some kind of public assistance. Some programs serve families with low levels of literacy, while others work with parents who are either attending school or employed in poorly paid jobs. Many of the children grow up in single-parent homes. The overall picture is that programs serve families with multiple- challenges including poverty and unemployment, domestic violence, illiteracy, social isolation, and substance abuse.
Early care and education programs can collaborate and develop strategies in their communities to address parents’ needs by:
- Developing programs that enhance parents’ skills, knowledge, and motivation to be involved with their children’s education.
- Creating early childhood programs that support parents in their journey toward education and self-sufficiency.
- Helping parents gain access to services which address their needs and use their strengths through partnerships with community agencies.
- Creating “caring communities” for parents by providing social support and promoting participation in community planning.
- Offering multiple services for families in one location that increase the availability in low-density areas.
- Providing more flexible hours of service that fit the parents working, training, or educational schedules.
- Providing care in an environment where siblings are present to offer the convenience of a single child care arrangement for working parents.
Meeting Child Needs
Most early care and education programs have commonalities:
- They all provide services to young children;
- They all have frequent contacts with parents;
- They may work with children who have special needs;
- They may work with the USDA nutrition program;
- They share a commitment to providing quality services for all children and families; and
- They all have a great deal of knowledge and experience to offer each other.
Young low-income children who are at risk often receive services and assistance from a variety of agencies. Frequently, these agencies provide fragmented services even though coordination and communication could help improve services for the child. Agencies often do not know what other service providers are doing, what services are already provided, or what information is already available to understand a child’s needs.
In Illinois, leaders are helping develop collaboration between Head Start and other early care and education programs. Head Start programs are serving as core organizations, collaborating with community agencies and providing a central location where multiple agencies can work together to meet children’s needs. Across the state, agencies are implementing programs that collaborate in a variety of ways.
Such collaboration:
- Reduces the fragmentation of services by ensuring continuity of care for children, who benefit greatly from a relationship with a primary caregiver in a single setting.
- Builds a comprehensive support system for low-income children and families that increase their access to health and social services.
- Increases the knowledge of service professionals about the needs of children and families.
- Strengthens the local early childhood systems by helping them to get the most out of limited resources.
- Builds upon all the community’s resources in addressing the needs of children and families by expanding services in a cost-effective manner while maximizing the use of facilities.
- Improves quality in early childhood settings by combining resources to: improve staff-child ratios, expand training for child care staff, increase the number of staff with child development credentials, purchase equipment and supplies for children, and enhance child care facilities.
- Offers a range of settings that best meets the needs of the families by providing different options for the parent to choose from for their child’s early care and education.
Meeting Community Needs
The United States is in the midst of significant reform efforts in education, health care, and social services that hold major, but unclear, implications for Head Start and other community service organizations in the years ahead. Head Start faces a central challenge posed by its mandate to be a comprehensive, community-based program, on one hand, and by its need to make reasonable judgments about what it can be expected to accomplish in the context of contemporary poverty, on the other. For many programs this raises questions about what it means to involve families in Head Start, the interdependence of Head Start and other community resources in efforts to achieve positive outcomes for children and families, and Head Start’s role in relation to other organizations and resources in the community.
Today, it is increasingly difficult to meet all of the needs of low-income families, with full-time employment by low-income mothers, growing needs for mental health services, calls to improve family literacy, and rising community violence, to name a few contemporary pressures. But there are programs that have developed creative strategies for involving all parents, encouraging the participation of fathers, addressing community violence, providing family literacy and self-sufficiency programs, teaching in the context of multilingual classrooms, and linking Head Start with other community agencies.
By collaborating, these programs have been able to:
- Share information on particular children and families
- Develop shared missions and integrated programs
- Coordinate services more completely
- “Braid” funds for shared purposes
- Provide multiple services at a central site.
To develop partnerships, community agencies must come together to determine how to best meet the needs of the children and families that they serve.
Community building action steps should include:
- Conducting a joint community assessment to identify needs, problems, strengths, and community resources that will assist in developing partnerships. Head Start programs already do an in depth community assessment every three years, with annual updates.
- Developing and using a planning tool for guidance in identifying needs and monitoring the development of partnerships.
- Contacting community agencies for information, products, and services to help build collaboration.
- Contacting local agencies to mobilize support for collaboration.
- Reviewing research and planning guides to strengthen partnerships with parents and community agencies.
- Examining other models of collaboration already in use.
- Encouraging staff to collaborate with parents and community agencies in developing programs and services for children and families.
Collaborations can be instrumental in fostering fundamental changes in communities by: increasing parental involvement in community decision-making; increasing employment of low income families; and allowing community agencies to work together in serving low income families more effectively.
