To promote children's healthy development and give them opportunities to flourish, families need a wide range of support services. These services are often disconnected from each other. Early care and education (ECE) has a particularly fragmented system (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2018). Systems with myriad processes…

The ability to think in terms of a system is critical to achieving common direction, alignment, and commitment in highly distributed health systems. In Canada, provincial and territorial ministries of health provide leadership on the direction of health reform while leadership to align system levels is determined by a far more distributed group of…

A survey was conducted of 3,417 children and youth seen at some of two dozen university affiliated programs (UAPs). Results suggested that diagnostic services are most frequent and that UAPs often serve a tertiary care function for schools, though formal agreements for most inservice activities or child service are rarely in evidence. (Author/CL)

Surveyed state and local health planning agencies and Older Americans Act agencies. Found that coordination between aging and health planning agencies is directly associated with the level of attention given to long-term care priorities by the latter agencies. Findings suggest that coordination strategies may be important for policy change.…

Three principle perspectives which serve as the basic rationales for the growth of alternative education since World War II are: (1) sociological--the altering of traditional formats of education in terms of organization, adaptation, socialization, and integration; (2) psychological--the belief that the student cannot be manipulated but is unique…

This document discusses the development and implementation of a multiservice center that could offer a variety of human social services in a single location. The paper focuses on seven components of the center's operation: governance, organizational structure, core services, joint funding, joint planning, joint programming, and evaluation. The…

Conducted structured interviews of seven selected Mental Health (MH) and Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) dyads to assess interagency functioning, and compared results to selected interagency performance indicators. Results suggested that improved MH-VR linkages can increase the probability of successful rehabilitation outcomes for psychiatrically…

Case surveys of 99 federally funded regular education inservice special education training projects revealed, among other findings, that local and state agencies were strongest in collaboration, that projects used the full range of quality practices in their planning, and that projects become more field-based as collaboration increased. (CL)

To determine availability of resources to help State Departments of Education develop and disseminate materials to persons seeking information about handicapped persons, 60 agencies completed questionnaires. Results indicated a modest level of joint material development and dissemination practices but high interest and capability in future…

A systematic investigation was conducted into the nature of interagency cooperative relationships to identify characteristics, factors, and components. Through a review of the literature, terms were defined, and incentives and benefits, facilitators, and barriers were identified. A naturalistic approach to inquiry was used to study the interagency…

A review of the literature on coordination between organizations tested the assumptions that coordination is "good," that coordinated efforts are more effective than the efforts of individual organizations, and that various coordination strategies work equally well. The literature review revealed that the development of the coordination concept…

The usefulness and costs of California state/local interagency agreements made to comply with P.L. 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, were examined. Ninety-three personal and telephone interviews were conducted in 10 areas: 5 Master Plan Special Education Service Regions (SERS) and 5 "in transition" areas…

This paper on longitudinal/intervention research is divided into a discussion of the problems of this strategy and a working paper. Many of the problems are practical ones, concerning the uncertain trends of funding and the drifting of goals and priorities; all of the methodological problems and inadequacies of longitudinal research and…

Investigates the coordination of services for children with developmental disabilities among state agencies. Results suggest that a substantial number of children with developmental disabilities and their families receive services from child welfare agencies and that service coordination among agencies relies heavily on formal interagency…

Although the belief is strong in human service organizations that services should be coordinated to permit the resolution of the client's total problems, there is no consensus on what works best. To provide federal and state agency planners with information about research, trends, and issues in coordinating youth services at the state level, a…