Introduction

What has happened to our families and communities?

Can schools go it alone and be effective?

Who has responsibility for what?

Strengthening families and communities through collaborative services

School-linked service integration models

Collaborative service delivery

School-linked services and special education

Prerequisites for setting up school-linked programs

Discussion

Endnotes

References

It takes a whole village to raise a child (African proverb popular with school reformers).

It takes a whole village to educate a child-unless the villagers disagree (Professor David Berliner, commenting on "contemporary disagreements about the role of religion and values in education [which suggest] that unless rapprochement takes place, the village public schools will disappear").

It doesn't take a village to raise a child, it takes a family (1996 Republican presidential candidate, Bob Dole, disagreeing with first lady Hillary Clinton's book It Takes a Village).

The popularity of the proverb 'It takes a whole village to raise a child', and the lively responses it has generated, capture many of the issues that are central to contemporary thinking about school and community relations. ¹  In the quest for advantage (or survival) in today's competitive worldwide economy, school reform and restructuring have become international obsessions.  Part of the restructuring picture in many places, moreover, involves calls to transform school and community relationships.  But how these relationships should be revised-either for greater school effectiveness or for broader public goals-remains a subject of great debate.

In this article, I want to discuss some of the leading and competing theories and models of school-community relationships, and especially those implied by the coordinated or collaborative services movement; i.e., the effort to coordinate the activities of schools and other human services agencies serving children and families, particularly those that are considered to be at risk.  These competing models or theories are not just matters of academic interest, they are the centre of attention here for two reasons: first because they influence the way professionals in the schools and other agencies view their jobs, the kind of paradigms that shape their behaviour and the language in which they speak; and, second, because they also influence the politics and policy-making associated with education.

Discussions of these matters seldom remain tranquil for long.  This terrain is full of emotional issues and contested concepts from family values and lifestyles to the meaning of community, citizenship, and personal and parental responsibility.  In the USA, at least, we are in the midst of what is being called culture wars over these matters (Hunter, 1991; Bennett, 1992; Gaddy et al., 1996).  Indeed, as noted above, disputes over these matters figured in a very central way in the 1996 presidential election campaign.  My observations in Australia, the UK, and elsewhere suggest that similar contestation is occurring in many places, as societies struggle with the troubling tensions and discontinuities generated by rapid and profound social change.

How does all of this affect educational leadership and the learning community?  The answer, I think is: pervasively, right across the board.  After all leadership is, in many ways, a balancing act.  Leaders are constantly needing to balance competing needs, and in education and the social services they find themselves on increasingly unstable ground: What balance, for example, should they strike in the perennial tension for managers between a concern for performance and a concern for people?  Within schools, what balance should be struck between academic press and a sense of caring community-i.e., between a commitment to achievement and a commitment to caring?  And, between the school and community, what balance should be struck between the interests and needs of parents and community groups and agencies, on the one hand, and the professional teaching staff, on the other hand?

In the midst of all the calls for restructuring and revised relationships, the balancing act for school leaders has become much more precarious.  They now often feel as though they must do pirouettes on an unstable balance beam.  How can we stay on track as we walk this balance beam?  To use another metaphor, like a fiddler on the roof, we try to keep our balance by drawing upon our traditions.  But the traditions of public school administration tend not to be very helpful because we are in the midst of paradigm shifts in our field: e.g., from input-driven to outcome-based management; to new forms of public management, including quasi-privatised management; to new conceptions of the meaning and boundaries of educational systems.

Thus, in the USA at least, public school administration has a tradition that has been quite wary of community involvement in schools.  Apart from the role of elected citizens on school boards-for districts, not individual schools-this tradition has tended to keep parents at arm's length, except in highly circumscribed supportive roles.  But this tradition-built upon a model of a depoliticised, professionalised, one best system approach (Tyack, 1974) to the provision of schooling-is under attack and has lost much of its legitimacy (Cibulka,1996).  The question of what should replace the old model, however, remains unclear.  How much and in what ways parents and other actors-including agencies from outside the school should be involved in school affairs is still very much up in the air.  Ogawa (1996, p.2) nicely captures the tensions here when he observes that:
 

It is surprising that [the] assumption that more parental involvement of all types is always better that has gone largely unchallenged... [E]ffective organizations create both bridges and buffers between their core technologies and external environments.  If teaching and leaning are assumed to constitute the core technology of schools and if parents of students are assumed to be crucial and immediate elements of the external environments of schools, then schools would be expected to seek to enhance their effectiveness by building bridges to parents under some conditions and buffers against them in others.

In contrast to the view, at one extreme, that more parental and community involvement of all types in schools is always better there is the opposing view, at the other extreme, that schools should limit their activities to traditional academic instruction and that they-and all other actors external to the family-should stay completely out of the affective and nonacademic lives of children and families.

With this background, I would like to raise and discuss several related questions in this paper: First, what has happened to our families and communities and why is there so much interest in rethinking the school's relationship with them?  Second, to what extent do effective schools require community and parental support or, alternatively, to what extent can schools succeed alone or despite their communities and families?  Third, what is the responsibility of schools to their families and communities, and vice versa?  Also, who defines where schools' communities-and their respective responsibilities-begin and end?  Fourth, to what extent can families and communities be strengthened through efforts such as the movement for coordinated, school-linked services?

The best known models of school-community relationships have a variety of diverging implications regarding the issues raised in these questions.  Before addressing the questions, I should sketch out the main models I have in mind.  Very briefly, a bureaucratic model suggests that the traditional government school provides bureaucratically regulated and governed services to the public, largely as bureaucrats see fit, with little input from, or responsiveness to, its clients.  At its worst, the school is a closed system, and is rigid and unresponsive, even to its own employees.

A professional model, by contrast, emphasises the professional responsibilities, rights, and needs of a school's staff and of their relationship to their clients.  Most schools, of course, have elements of both the bureaucratic and professional models, but the authority structures of the two models conflict with one another, as bureaucratic rules and professional rights and needs often encroach upon one another.  Professionals are supposed to know what is best for their clients, so the wishes of clients may receive little more attention than they would in the bureaucratic model.

Democratic models are intended to compensate for, and balance, the shortcomings of bureaucratic and professional models.  The self-managing school-with provision for democratic governance involving staff, parents, and community members-is 
a leading example of this amalgam.  In practice, however, some school-based management models minimise the governance role and input of persons outside the school staff and, indeed, sometimes of those within also.

Advocates of a market-driven model are skeptical, one might say, of all other models, and certainly of bureaucratic, professional and democratic models which they see as prone to inefficiency and monopoly (Chubb & Moe, 1990).  They contend that efficiency and excellence can best be achieved by allowing consumers to choose in a market of education service providers whose survival depends upon attracting and retaining customers.

The coordinated or collaborative services model combines bureaucratic and professional elements with a central emphasis on devising ways for service agencies-usually including schools-to cooperate in mounting a coordinated and comprehensive, rather than fragmented and piecemeal, approach to serving the needs of at risk children and families.  A key method is often the use of case managers who look after the overall needs of children and families, and facilitate a coherent response to these needs on the part of cooperating, specialised service agencies.  How these collaborative models, involving disparate agencies and organizations, are to be managed or governed, and the degree to which there is provision for democratic, community involvement, are challenging and problematic issues in this youthful social movement (Crowson & Boyd, 1995b).

Finally-in this clearly incomplete listing-there is a variety of other models of schools and their communities that involve a range of values, norms and relationships that expand on, or diverge from, those implied by the basic models discussed above.  Numerous scholars, for example, have used the concept of sense of community to explain or highlight social differences between schools.  Coleman & Hoffer (1998), for instance, argue that in contrast to modern day US public schools Catholic schools tend to be based around functional communities where school members share the same place of worship and interact with each other both in and out of the classroom and in and out of the school.  They also make the point that urban Catholic schools are able to attract large numbers of non-Catholic families by offering a value community supportive of their beliefs and expectations about schooling and child rearing.  For the school and its members, the result is a network of mutually reinforcing social relationships-a well of social capital to be tapped for the purpose of attaining meaningful educational goals (see Brown, 1995).

Bryk & Driscoll (1988; and see Bryk et al., 1993) expand this understanding of school commonality, clarify its organisational foundations and show how it applies to public as well as Catholic schools.  In a key study combining elements of theoretical and empirical analysis, Bryk & Driscoll (1988) argue that, whether public or private, communally organised schools evidence:  (1) a consensus over beliefs and values; (2) a common agenda of course work, activities, ceremonies and traditions; and (3) an ethic of caring that pervades the relationships of student and adult school members.  Based on analyses of a national sample of US schools and students, Bryk and Driscoll found that schools with higher levels of commonality (as measured by an array of survey items representing each of the three core components) also evidenced higher attendance rates, better morale (among both students and teachers) and higher levels of student achievement.

The acute contrast and tension between some secular models of state schools and religious models of schools is a matter of growing concern in many places. Commenting on this, in the context of the legally required separation of church and state in the USA, Glenn (undated, p. 5) observes that:

Group prayer in American public schools is legally permissible provided that it is initiated by students within the context of voluntary extracurricular activities and there is no possibility of an appearance of endorsement or encouragement by the school.  It is thus barely tolerated compared with, say, school-sponsored discussion of non-religious "lifestyles". Massachusetts recommends "school-based support groups" for gay students in every high school, with paid faculty advisors "with personal experience, such as self-identified gay and lesbian teachers" who are to "attend each meeting, listen to students and communicate their needs to the administration".  There should be a section of "books and materials related to gay and lesbian issues" in all school libraries, including films and "a well-researched guide to resources . . . including community-based lesbian and gay youth groups".  Schools could not, legally, assign self-identified believing Christian or Jewish teachers to a similar role with groups meeting for prayer or Bible study; religious books and films are rare in school libraries, nor would they provide references to youth Ministries.²

An even more acute tension between secular and religious models is found today in France.  Glenn reports that the Education Minister, M. Bayrou stated in September 1994 that 'all distinctions must stop at the door of the school, whether they are of sex, of culture or of religion.  This secular and national ideal is the very substance of the school of the Republic and the basis of its responsibility for civic education' (Glenn, undated, p. 4).  Thus, Glenn (undated, p. 3, original emphasis) writes that:
 

The desire of some Muslim girls to cover their hair in class with a scarf or hijab has been widely interpreted as an impermissible intrusion of religion and ethnicity into schools.  The Jacobin model of aggressively secular public education seeks to confine real human differences-including religious convictions-to the private sphere.  This typically French "liberal fundamentalism" fails to take into account the communities and beliefs by which people (not just Muslim immigrants) structure their lives.  Ironically, the counter-rejection it evokes prevents many immigrants from participating securely in the wider society.  Rather than offering a truly neutral space where children can work out a relationship with a culture beyond that of their family, the aggressively secular school forces them to break either with family or with society.³

Let us turn now to first of the questions I wish to address:  What has happened to our families and communities and why is there so much interest in rethinking the school's relationship with them? 

Here I am reminded of an apocryphal public survey that asked: 'What's the worst thing that has happened in our society, ignorance or apathy?'. The typical answer obtained was: 'I don't know and I don't care!'.

In reality, of course, most people do very much care about the disturbing trends seen in many societies today.  Indeed, this has been the subject of many full-length books, so all we can do here is to touch briefly on these issues.  Kristol (1996, p. A16) summed up the current social and political situation in the USA as follows:
 

The current breakup experienced by the American family is having a profound effect on American politics, as well as on American society.  One can go further and say that the social problems we are confronting, problems either created or exacerbated by our welfare state, are making the welfare state a cultural issue as well as an economic one.  The Christian right understands this, as does the secularist left. The "culture wars" are no political sideshow.  Today, and in the years ahead, they will be energizing and defining all the controversies that revolve around the welfare state.

One can debate about the extent to which it is the welfare state or the capitalist state that has created or exacerbated the social problems confronting us, but there is no doubt that they are there. With soaring divorce and illegitimacy rates, the lives of families and children are increasingly imperilled. The neglect of children-especially poor children-in the USA is appalling.  The burgeoning senior citizens' lobby can vote but children cannot. As a result Hewlett (1991) notes that the USA spends nine times as much on the elderly as on children and twice as much on military pensions as on Aid for Dependent Children (AFDC). The USA underwrites multiple by-pass surgery for prosperous 70 year-olds but fails to find the money to provide prenatal care for poor women.

As Garbarino (1995) sees it we are now raising children in what he terms a socially toxic environment polluted by the combined effects of poverty, the breakdown of families and communities, the neglect of children, soaring levels of violence and crime-including the proliferation of guns and shootings, drug and alcohol abuse, and the threat of AIDS. To this litany, Pipher (1994, p. 12) adds the destructive effects of our materialistic, capitalist society:

[G]irls today are much more oppressed [despite the beneficial effects of women's liberation for older females].  They are coming of age in a more dangerous, sexualized and media-saturated culture.  They face incredible pressures to be beautiful and sophisticated, which in junior high means using- chemicals and being sexual.  As they navigate a more dangerous world, girls are less protected ... As I looked at the culture that girls enter as they come of age, I am struck by what a girl-poisoning culture it was.  The more I looked around, the more I listened to today's music, watched television and movies and looked at sexist advertising, the more convinced I became that we are on the wrong path with our daughters.  America today limits girls' development, truncates their wholeness and leaves many of them traumatized.

It is no accident that Pipher's (1994) Reviving Ophelia was number one on the New York Times list of best-selling non-fiction (and at the time of writing had been on the list for 76 weeks).  Her book speaks to the epidemic we, now face of young women with emotional problems and eating disorders as they strive to meet unattainable, media-manipulated standards of thinness, beauty and sexual prowess.

Another problem is the increasing concentration of the poor, the underskilled and underemployed in the inner-cities of large metropolises.  The US version of this-is compounded by racism and an exodus to the suburbs of the middle-class and of employment opportunities-has produced an under-class that Wilson (1987) calls the 'truly disadvantaged'.  With the rapid disappearance of opportunities for unskilled labor, social conditions in inner-city ghettoes have plummeted to unprecedented levels of squalor and despair.

Finally, this short summary of negative trends must also include the breakdown of the sense of commonweal of community and caring, as too many citizens in our highly secularised and de-moralised societies (Himmelfarb, 1994) narrowly pursue their economic self-interests, assert rights without a sense of responsibility (Etzioni, 1993) and retreat from communal activities into solitary television viewing (Garbarino, 1995; Putnam 1995).  In a widely-cited article, this marked decline in civic participation and communal involvement, and its troubling implications for democracy, have been captured metaphorically by Putnam (1995) who asserts that many Americans are now, in effect, 'bowling alone', rather than as participating as members of clubs and associations.

Given the magnitude of the problems listed above, one can rightly ask how much the schools can reasonably be expected to contribute to their solution.  Nevertheless, the tendency to see the schools as vehicles for the resolution or at least amelioration of social problems is deeply embedded in the public's mind.  As one report (Committee for Economic Development, 1994, p. 4) put it: 'Many look to the school instead of to parents and community as the frontline defence against every social or health problem...'.  While this is a misguided attitude that can set the schools up for failure, it is still true that schools, because of the strategic place they occupy in society, can in fact contribute to the reduction?if not solution?of many social problems.  Moreover, with the breakdown of families many look to the schools in desperation as the next best hope for the solution of social problems.
 

Let us turn now to the question of the extent to which effective schools require community and parental support or, alternatively, can succeed alone or despite their communities and families.  The effective schools movement, of course, began in an effort to discover how schools could succeed with disadvantaged students, despite their lack of backgrounds conducive to success in schools.  Clearly, there is encouraging evidence (Sammons et al., 1995; National Commission on Education, 1996) that schools with the right combination of attributes and leadership can be far more effective with disadvantaged students than average schools.  Still, it has been difficult to successfully replicate the effective schools model widely.

At risk students-especially those with many problems-tend to be very great challenges for traditional schools and this is part of the reason for the growth of interest in the movement for coordinated, school-linked services since it helps meet these challenges.  Recognising these realities, new versions of effective schools models-such as those designed by James Comer and by Henry Levin-usually
include very concerted efforts to build positive linkages to their families and communities.

Recently, Steinberg (1996) has argued forcefully that our expectations of success for school reform will continue to be dashed until we effectively confront the pervasive problem in many societies of widespread student disengagement from learning.  Based on data collected from more than 20,000 teenagers and their families in nine different US communities, Steinberg concluded that a high proportion of US youth and their parents do not take school seriously.  Unlike the culture in Pacific Rim countries and some European nations (Steinberg, 1996, pp. 18-19):
 

The adolescent peer culture in contemporary America demeans academic success and scorns students who try to do well in school.  Fewer than one in five students say their friends think it is important to get good grades in school.  More than half of all students say they could bring home grades of C or worse without their parents getting upset.

Moreover, Steinberg notes that in the USA anti-intellectualism, always a problem, has become increasingly chic; we even are seeing that he calls the 'glorification of stupidity'.  'People of all ages, but adolescents and young adults in particular [are] fascinated with television shows and films in which the lead characters [are] admired for being insipid, anti-intellectual or just plain stupid-"The Simpsons"... "Beavis and Butt-head", "Dumb and Dumber", "Forest Gump" [etc.]' (Steinberg, 1996, p. 44).  Needless to say, it is very difficult for schools to succeed with children and parents who see little value in schooling, and lack the motivation and discipline to take advantage of educationa1 opportunities.
 
 

This brings us to my third question: What is the responsibility of schools to their communities and families (and vice versa)?  We are beginning to see a resurgence of the old view that parents must take real responsibility for helping their children succeed in school.  In the UK, the Labour Party's Excellence for Everyone policy document on education proposed 'written home-school contracts, to help combat truancy and improve discipline by linking families and schools more closely.  National homework guidelines would recommend a minimum of half an hour a night from the age of seven and one and a half hours for secondary pupils' (Carvel, 1995, p. 8).  Similarly, in the USA, a well-known teachers union leader, Adam Urbanski (1996, p. 31), has proposed that parents be allowed to choose schools, but that the chosen school should be given 'the authority to require that parents and students who select that school sign a compact outlining mutual obligations vis-a-vis behavior codes, academic performance standards, parental involvement, teacher and school commitments'.

The trend toward parental choice of schools leads us to the subsidiary question: Who defines where schools' communities-and their respective responsibilities-begin and end? Recent trends toward self-managing schools and toward school choice-challenge traditional ideas about what constitutes a system of schools or a community.  To what extent is a system of nearly or completely autonomous schools, for example, really a system? To whom are they accountable and for what?  To what extent do communities exist when they are mainly the aggregate of individualistic choices?

Contrary to what one may expect, the answers to these questions are neither simple nor ideologically pure.  As Millot et al. (1996) argue, choice plans could be designed to foster a sense of system and community rather than the more likely fragmentation.  In his review of Victoria's Schools of the Future policy Townsend (1995) raises these questions in a powerful way, as this venture stands accused of undermining equity in the provision of education.  Similarly, critics of the UK school reforms (e.g., Jenkins, 1995; Boyd, 1996; Stearns, 1996) claim that both democracy and equity are casualties of Tory policies which simultaneously combine school choice and local management of schools with excessive mechanisms of centralised control.  In the USA, criticism of the public schools, and advocacy of school choice and privatisation (Center on National Education Policy, 1996; Mathews, 1996) have eroded public commitment to a public school system.

The complexity of the issues in this domain is well illustrated by a study in New Zealand (Timperley & Robinson, 1995) which found that school choice-rather than community-school partnership?was the more effective mechanism for achieving a match between parents' and schools' educational values.  In explaining their findings Timperley & Robinson (1995, p. 147, emphasis added) stress that 'both in New Zealand and internationally, the research evidence indicates that professionals have remained relatively unresponsive to the views of parents even when a community-school partnership is encouraged or mandated'.  This finding should be a cautionary tale for educators: if they do not like school choice and privatisation they had better become much more responsive to their clients.

As illustrated by the UK experience noted above, the goal of maintaining an equitable and efficient system by balancing self-managing schools with centralised standards and requirements is easier to state than to accomplish.  Sooner or later decentralising decision-making power-to school site administrators, teachers and parents-raises questions about standards, consistency, equity and accountability across a system of schools.  The central administrative office of a school system is naturally inclined to resist decentralisation or to try to centralise power when it can (Crowson & Boyd, 1995b) in large part for reasons of consistency and accountability.  Further, the recent trend (seen especially in the UK and the USA) toward systemic school reform efforts-with its advocacy of national standards and associated testing schemes-obviously exists in a tense relationship, if not outright conflict, with the desire to decentralise and empower site-level educators.
 
 

Let us turn now to the main question I wish to address: the extent to which families and communities can be strengthened through efforts such as the movement for coordinated, school-linked services.  In this section I draw on my research as principal investigator for the five-year School-Community Connections project of the National Center on Education in the Inner Cities.⁴   Here, we need to examine the new models of school-community relations that are being proposed or implemented and their implications.  Such initiatives in coordinated services are now being undertaken in Australia.⁵

The traditional fragmentation of responsibility among a variety of agencies for the large array of social and health services needed by poor children and their families is increasingly viewed as dysfunctional and unacceptable.  Consequently, with substantial support from foundations and reform-minded public officials the coordinated services movement has blossomed in the USA.  Numerous projects and experiments with coordinated services are in progress across the nation.  Usually linked to or centred upon schools these ventures have the potential not only to deliver much more coherent and satisfactory services, but also to link the school far more effectively with its supporting community.  Indeed, this effort has come to be seen as part of the restructuring movement and some advocates have expected substantial changes in the internal operations of schools to flow from involvement with coordinated services approaches.

For a variety of reasons-related to such problems as turf issues, and differences in professional cultures and languages among service agencies-coordinated service ventures have proved to be more difficult to achieve than anticipated, especially when begun on a very large scale.  The good news is that they are clearly benefiting at risk children and their families; the bad news is that the traditional culture and autonomy of schools often makes them one of the more troublesome partners in collaborative efforts.  The bureaucratic and professional models are deeply ingrained in schools, and this impedes collaboration with outside agencies as well as with parents and community members.  In the case of coordinated decision services models, schools face a twin challenge: How should they relate to other agencies? And: What role and voice, if any, should community members have in defining the character and governance of the new collaborative services?  Unless schools are led by strong and creative champions for coordinated services, they tend to continue business as usual (Crowson & Boyd, 1993, 1996).  Significantly, a key factor in successful ventures is the creation of a shared sense of community.  Research by White & Wehlage (1995), which underscores the barriers to collaboration, indicates that the more bureaucratic and the less communal in orientation the agencies and actors in coordinated services projects are the less likely they are to succeed.

Today, we very much recognise that the schooling of many children is significantly compromised by health and social problems that require services beyond what parents and schools are able to provide (Behrman, 1992).  We find students failing along a continuum from those ready, healthy and able to achieve at school to those with many barriers to learning?including deficiencies in necessary prerequisite skills, dysfunctional home situations, peers who are negative influences, and inadequate health and social support services (Adelman, 1993).  To eliminate or minimise the effect of these barriers, and to ensure that non-school issues which affect the performance of students are addressed, schools have sought alliances with other-relevant agencies.

These non-instructional services should not be viewed as a diversion from the main task of school.  Schools are already affected by the consequences of non-educational problems among students and their families, and they often deal with such problems with few resources and little expertise.  Growing numbers of students-especially those from urban areas-are requiring increasing amounts of support before they can benefit fully from classroom instruction.  For these students a comprehensive set of enabling services must accompany their educational programs if we are to assure their opportunities to learn.  By joining with social and health agencies to provide non-academic services, schools can concentrate on educational performance-the function schools are best suited to handle-and escape criticism that the school's academic mission is being derailed.

Growing interest in school-linked services in the USA is due to large-scale social changes and the immigration of ethnic minorities to major cities, which has resulted in multiple responsibilities being placed on public schools.  Current initiatives at the local, state and federal levels, however, have drawn lessons from the long history of school reform.  Past efforts remained peripheral to the regular school program and were vulnerable to retrenchment or elimination when funds were scarce.  Today's reformers hope to create and implement an integrated care and educational system which includes a dramatic reconceptualisation and restructuring of the relationship between the school, the community, and the larger society (Guthrie & Guthrie, 1991).

The prevailing system of human service delivery-in which education, health, and social services are separate entities-is a large unwieldy bureaucracy in which services are fragmented, overlapping and often inaccessible for those who need them most (Guthrie & Guthrie, 1991; Morrill, 1992).  Preventive action is rare (i.e., problems have to become acute before services are brought to bear) and programs are implemented in isolation without consideration for the overall condition of the child and family.

The current emphasis on inter-agency collaboration is seen by many (e.g., Kagan, 1994) as crucial to reconfiguring the nature and structural alignment of mainstream institutions.  By combining a wealth of expertise and a variety of perspectives in inter-agency partnerships systems can be re-oriented away from the narrowness of single-agency mandates toward attending to the multiple problems of children and families in a comprehensive, meaningful way (Melaville & Blank, 1991).

Inter-agency collaboration is based on the belief that no one agency can provide all the necessary services for children and families.  In a collaborative effort, all contributing parties must see the necessity and value of collaboration in order to achieve successful service delivery.  Integral to improving service coordination is strengthening the ability of agencies to work together, share scarce resources and take advantage of each other's respective disciplinary knowledge.  Collaboration must include a broad cross-section of people and agencies who are in close communication, engaged in joint planning and policy development, and focused on accountability (Gardner, 1989; Chang, 1993).

Whether community services are located physically at the school site or linkages are built between the school and a wide range of public and private community-based agencies, the intent of the school-linked service integration movement is to develop effective connections between the school and community service agencies (Gardner, 1992).  Together, schools and community agencies can redefine their responsibilities, share decision-making and jointly develop a comprehensive system to promote child growth and development.  The overall goal of school-linked services is to ensure that all children are equally able to succeed by addressing their multiple needs in a coordinated manner (Chang, 1993).

No single model for school-linked service integration currently predominates.  Many different types of collaborative programs, have been initiated that vary in the composition and intensity of services delivered, skill of staff and mode of delivery, and target group served (Morrill, 1992).  They range from single, one component partnerships between a school and an outside agency or business to sophisticated, complex, multi-component multi-agency collaborations (Dryfoos,1994).  In most cases, services are joined to the schools via informal agreements, contractual agreements, established systems of referral and sometimes mechanisms which enable staff members of various community agencies to be outposted or shared.  While the approaches are diverse, what they all have in common is the intent of ensuring access to and continuity of health and social services to students and their families (Kagan 1994).

Variation also exists in the type of collaboration practised.  While most centres have moved beyond simple co-operation toward more coordinated activity (i.e., defined by degree of institutional autonomy of the partners), they differ in the negotiated order among participating agencies.  Thus, there is wide variety and creativity in children's services coordination to date, and no one best way to proceed.  Nevertheless, as experimentation proceeds, and indeed as the pace of program development increases, the pros and cons of comparative approaches to services coordination are beginning to become clear.  Differences in effectiveness, for example, may be associated with variation in the locus of service provision.  A school-based approach benefits from the school's position as a dominant neighbourhood institution but can suffer from excessive control by schools.  A school-linked approach can more effectively balance school and non-school contributions but may still be too heavily institutions-oriented.  A community-based model can incorporate a wider diversity of resources and facilities (e.g., churches, community organizations, clubs) but may lose some focus and sharpness in its dispersion of stakeholders.

One important issue for integrated services programs is: Just how much coordination among services is necessary and desirable? The literature on coordinated services tends to be ambivalent on this issue.  While distinguishing between cooperation and collaboration, for example, Hord (1986, p. 22) says that both are 'valued models, but each serves a unique purpose and yields a different return'.  But she then contradicts this by saying that collaboration is highly recommended as the most appropriate mode for interorganisational relationships' (Hord, 1986, p. 26).

The idea of alternative models for coordinated ventures has been advanced not only by Hord (1986) but also by Intriligator (1992) who suggests that inter-agency interactions can be usefully examined along a continuum from cooperation through coordination to collaboration.  In co-operation the independence of individual agencies may be little affected, changes in institutional policy and structure are minimal, and turf is not a serious issue.  Under collaboration (at the other end of the continuum), however, there will be a loss of institutional autonomy, inter-agency policy-making in place of agency independence, and a need to go beyond turf toward consensus and well-established trust.  Experience thus far nationally suggests that, rather than being cooperative, coordinative or collaborative, some efforts have tended simply to be co-located.  Even in co-location, however, difficult issues can arise over shared facilities usage, managerial control, resource allocation, profession-protection and information flow.

In general, then, the state-of-the-art in children's services collaboration has typically not progressed to an idealised point where participating organisations in projects share completely in the delivery of services, agree fully on goals and outcomes, contribute resources equally, share control and leadership, communicate and interact smoothly, and operate as served 'we' rather than 'us and them'.  Rather, it is far more likely thus far that projects will be struggling with problems in blending other services into the institutional dominion of the school, in reaching a shared sense of mission and shared leadership and control in collaborative ventures, and in building effective communicative linkages between the project's array of service-providers (Crowson & Boyd, 1996).

In Together We Can (Melaville et al., 1993)-a very helpful guide to collaboration developed jointly by the US Department of Health and Human Services, and the US Department of Education-a five-stage process of building collaboration for comprehensive family services is laid out.  The steps include: (1) getting together, (2) building trust, (3) developing a strategic plan; (4) taking action; and (5) going to scale (Melaville et al., 1993, p. 20).  The ultimate goal of going to scale (i.e., applying the principles of coordination widely across an entire jurisdiction, rather than narrowly in one limited pilot project) raises the issue of how ambitious and comprehensive coordinated services ventures should try to be, especially at the outset.

One way of comparing coordinated services is according to their differing styles of administrative implementation (Crowson & Boyd, 1995a). Projects are frequently initiated as stategic interventions?pragmatically and iteratively moving toward a goal of coordination and problem-solving as the project unfolds.  The alternative and often recommended model is a strategy of systemic reform in which key institutional constraints (e.g., agencies' functional boundaries, conflicting reward systems, differing norms and conventions, professional training differences and the like) are identified and a comprehensive overall coordination and implementation plan is developed before proceeding further.

As a practical matter, there are advantages in starting with less ambitious projects but some significant hazards.  Such ventures can get under way faster since they can avoid the complex negotiations and transaction costs of trying to work out all the details of complicated inter-agency agreements.  Rather than requiring elaborate formal agreements, they can rely in part on a more informal approaches., building on positive personal networks among cooperating agency and school personnel.  By contrast, large comprehensive reform efforts require long and complex planning processes involving many agencies and actors.  The practical advantages of the less ambitious approach are reflected in the conclusions of a recent United States General Accounting Office (1992) report.

The hazards in the less ambitious approach are that such ventures can easily succumb to what Gardner (1989) calls 'projectitis': i.e., limited and temporary projects which ultimately leave fragmented the delivery system for children's services about where it was before.  Thus, the long-term challenge of the school-aged service integration movement is to reconfigure relationships between the school community and public service agencies (Kagan, 1994).

First and foremost, school-linked services should not simply be add-ons to the school program.  As Gardner (1992) cautions, additive projects do not change institutions because they operate as new activities grafted on top of the existing system.  Rather, the ultimate goal is formation of a new kind of community-oriented school, a seamless institution with some kind of joint or shared governance structure.  Second, service delivery must shift in emphasis from being program-centred to being family-centred.  This implies acknowledgment of the central role that families play in their children's well-being and in the mobilisation or coordination of community supports to assist families in carrying out their roles.  More intensive intervention is called for which is comprehensive, promptly delivered, and cuts across professional and programmatic categories (Morrill, 1992).  Lastly, maximum responsiveness to the community must be assured through changes in the working relationship between service providers and the people they serve.  As Chang (1993) notes, communities must be given the opportunity to participate in the design and implementation of programs and policies.

Social problems rarely exist in isolation.  Children suffering from child abuse, for example, are likely to experience other problems in their homes, such as family involvement in substance abuse and inadequate parental supervision.  Rather than referring families to various agencies, usually in different locations, school-linked integrated service programs offer many services, typically through a system of case management.  Case managers, from the school or community agencies assess, treat or refer families to a variety of services and then track the referrals and outcomes (Gardner, 1992).  This coordinated approach avoids the bureaucratic pitfalls which often prevent families from gaining access to needed services (i.e., difficulty comprehending eligibility requirements, incomplete knowledge of available services, transportation and child care problems, language barriers etc.), and spares families from involvement in inefficient and ineffective programs which address social problems in isolated and compartmentalised ways (i.e., teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, gang involvement, school dropout and low self-esteem.)  At the same time, Dryfoos (1994) argues that to be effective a program must encompass both quality education and comprehensive support services.  Dryfoos (1994, p. 12) notes that 'no single component, no magic bullet, can significantly change the lives of disadvantaged children, youth, and families.  Rather it is the cumulative impact of a package of interventions that will result in measurable changes in life scripts'.

Probably the two most recognised models of school-linked services are Zigler's Schools of the 21st Century (Zigler & Lang, 1991) and Comer's (1985) School Development Program.  Both programs promote schools that function as community centres and have in common: (1) the mobilisation and integration of community expertise and resources; (2) an emphasis on community renewal, family preservation and child development; and (3) the active involvement of all stakeholders in the identification and development of policies and procedures.  In Zigler's model, family support systems are linked with child care systems.  Program components include full-day child care for pre-school and school-age children, parent education and family support services, literacy training, and support for family day-care providers, and teenage pregnancy prevention services (Zigler & Lang, 1991).

The School Development Program-in operation in over 165 schools-emphasises the social context of teaching and learning.  The program is a school-based management approach to making school a more productive environment for poor, minority children.  Within the model, heavy emphasis is placed on mental health services, and the strengthening and redefining of relationships between school staff, parents, and students.  Four major components comprise the main thrust of the program: a governance and management team; a mental health team; a parent participation program; and a program for curriculum and staff development.  The basic goal is to create schools which offer children stability as well as role models to nuture them and increase their chances of academic success (Comer, 1985).

For students in special education many of the medical and psychological services which they require can be served through the school-linked services program.  For medically fragile children health care services-such as suctioning mucous from the airways of children, inserting feeding tubes, or administering insulin and other injections or medications-can be done by medical personnel in a centre rather than by teachers and aides (Dryfoos, 1994).  Student study teams composed of centre practitioners, school personnel and special education staff can review referrals from teachers and parents for psycho-social problems, and develop comprehensive action plans which detail how best to serve students' needs and who will do what.
For families with children with disabilities negotiation through the patchwork of disjointed service agencies and programs can be nearly impossible.  In some cases, the resources of many agencies must be activated in order to best address the existing needs of the child and family.  A child with emotional problems, for example, typically receives special education services from the school as well as counselling services from a mental health agency.  If there is a health problem, then (in the USA) it might be attended by the Department of Health Services.  If his or her mother is a single parent receiving AFDC then the Department of Social Services is involved with the family.  If the child or another family member is caught up in the court system the Department of Probation or even child welfare services may be brought in.  

When there is inter-agency collaboration then feedback and a mutual exchange of ideas can occur, and the number of overlaps and/or gaps in service can be reduced.  Further, agencies which share ideas and information, and co-ordinate efforts in structured collaboration, can avoid the misinterpretation of responsibility that often occurs when agencies operate independently (i.e., one agency believes that another is providing for needs that end up going unattended).  Not only can inter-agency collaboration offer a clearer understanding of each agency's goals and purposes, but the collaborative process more clearly outlines the needs of the individual or family as they relate to the service providers.

The following case study illustrates how the service integration centre at a school can serve as the primary case manager, advocate for the family and facilitate comprehensive services within a reasonable time line.  Sammy, a first grader, was referred by his teacher to the school-based service centre because of serious behaviour problems.  A case manager followed up and learned that Sammy's mother, a drug user, had abandoned him to the care of grandparents who were having a difficult time managing him.  Workers from the county departments of mental health and children's services-both on-site service providers in the centre-worked with the school to locate his mother and obtained her consent for a psychoeducational assessment of Sammy.  The evaluation confirmed that Sammy had ADHD [Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder] and medication was prescribed.  The case manager and the children's services worker continued to work closely with the grandparents to obtain physical custody of Sammy and to transfer AFDC benefits from Sammy's mother to his grandparents.  Finally, a meeting of the student study team, attended by Sammy's grandparents and the case manager, resulted in Sammy's placement in a special education classroom where his academic program would be modified and counselling would be provided.  The process took five months during which time the school, in collaboration with two public agencies, developed a joint service plan to address the needs of Sammy and his family in a holistic fashion (Zetlin et al., 1995).

Here are some emerging principles for inter-agency collaboration and pitfalls that social service and educational administrators should avoid.

First, quality leadership is essential.  There must be a top level catalyst who: (1) recognises that the current delivery of education, health and human services is not meeting the needs of at least some of the population served; and (2) has a vision for inter-agency collaboration as well as the authority to facilitate it (i.e., to do business differently and more effectively).

Second, we must understand the commitment of asking for parent involvement. in the planning and implementation of a school-linked services centre.  Inherent in this commitment must be a willingness: (1) of administrators and professionals to relinquish some of their power when decisions are made as to how business is to be conducted, what services and agencies to recruit and support, what needs are to be addressed and in what order, and (2) for school and centre staff to teach parents how to be involved (i.e., to nurture the development of their 'voice').

Third, we must be committed to ensuring that policies and practices are culturally compatible.  This goes beyond translating letters into the language of the home or assuring that a translator is present at meetings.  At one Los Angeles school-based centre where ESL classes are offered for parents, for example, parents attend with their younger children because of lack of money for child care.  Because the centre runs two ESL classes on alternate days centre staff help parents set up a reciprocal child care program in a nearby classroom where parents serve as sitters on the days they are not in class (Zettin et al., 1994).

Fourth, we must make long term commitments to program development since it may be five or 10 years before we see the kinds of outcome data which society will applaud.  Such long-term commitment includes: (1) a willingness to persevere as we struggle to work out issues of turf, leadership and mission; (2) acceptance of the dynamic nature of the process and the need to make changes in response to evaluation data and community input; and (3) commitment from school districts to forego their policy of transferring site administrators every three to five years and to allow a principal to remain in place during the initial period of growth and development.

Fifth, we must be committed to the nuts-and-bolts needs of the project and to seeking stable funding for operating costs.  This includes: (1) providing adequate space for the project (which may be difficult in some overcrowded school districts, but critical to the identity of the project) and also providing funding for a centre coordinator who is available for interagency networking for case management, troubleshooting and operations management (i.e., the coordinator is the glue that holds the pieces together); (2) providing training and crosstraining opportunities for participating school and community agency workers (in order to learn one another's language and programs, negotiate the necessary new roles and relationships between educators and other client service personnel-thus overcoming turf protection-and tackle such issues as communication, confidentiality and liability); and (3) incorporating the school-linked program into the regular budget so that when start-up, monies-demonstration grant monies-diminish or disappear the program does not disappear too.  Only when the program becomes central to the operation of the school and community will powerful supportive constituencies, parents, educators and service providers be committed to fight for its continued existence.

Sixth, there need to be variations in the models we develop so that programs are individualised to the particular needs and concerns of the school and community (i.e., schools with large immigrant populations, highly transient populations or large homeless populations; communities in need of child care or after school care, job training and employment, or those struggling with high drop-out rates, gang membership, substance abuse or teenage pregnancy).  No one model fits all settings and works well in all cases.  Variations of the model need to be available to suit differing local needs and concerns.  And most importantly, detailed evaluations of all models must take place to yield a much needed knowledge base on how to provide school-linked service integration that is both feasible and cost-effective.

Seventh, these integrated service projects must develop partnerships with local universities to provide the technical assistance for program development and evaluation.  University staff must also be involved for the purposes of inter-professional education.  The school-linked service integration Centre provides a collaborative setting for training educators and service workers so that they develop for coordinating efforts with workers from related fields (Adler & Gardner, 1994).  Until now most university training of professionals in children's services has inadvertently impeded collaborative efforts and inter-professional relations.  Such training is heavily constrained by a separation of knowledge bases by discipline and certification systems.  We need to begin building collaboration skills into undergraduate and graduate programs by restructuring our training programs.

Most of the exemplary school-linked programs are still in the development phase, so their effectiveness-whether they can substantially change the lives of high risk children and families-is largely unknown.  From the limited evaluation data available thus far, Dryfoos (1994) has identified the following patterns of outcomes:
 

• programs are located in communities and schools with the greatest need and are being utilised most by the highest risk students;
• availability of school health services has led to a decrease in absences for minor illnesses and less use of emergency rooms in areas with school clinics;
• substantial numbers of students and families are obtaining access to mental health counselling that was not available in their communities previously;
• student behavior is being influenced by the provision of health education in classrooms and group counselling covering a range of problems (e.g., substance use, family relations, sexuality, peer relationships);
• students, families and teachers report improvement in the school environment and a high level of satisfaction with the accessibility, convenience and support offered in the centres.

The fundamental goal of the service integration movement is to improve the conditions of teaching and learning within schools by attending to the personal and social problems that interfere with learning.  By providing the necessary family and social supports essential for child growth and development, and improving the school climate within which learning takes place, the needs of high risk children and their families can be addressed and access to future opportunities can be equalised.  As Dryfoos (1994) dramatically states, without a concerted effort millions of young people will continue to fail and will have little chance of growing into responsible and productive adults.

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