Collaboration has become the byword of the 1990s as a strategy for systemic change in human services, education, government, and community agencies. Increasingly, public and private funders are rewarding or requiring collaborative efforts. The advent of block grants is creating an urgent need for integrated, locally controlled services. Shrinking resources are causing many organizations to consider the potential benefits of working together.
Collaboration involves more intense, long-term efforts than do cooperation or coordination.
Collaborating agencies make a formal, sustained commitment to accomplishing a shared, clearly defined mission. Collaborative efforts can overcome such problems as fragmentation of client needs into distinct categories that ignore interrelated causes and solutions. This Brief looks at successful collaborations involving work force development, family literacy, and welfare reform to identify the elements that make collaborations effective. Based on existing guidelines and successful programs, the steps needed to create and sustain collaborative relationships are described to help adult, career, and vocational educators forge the linkages that could improve services. The center has shortened the time and cost of dependency on public funds and given employers access to a worker pool.