COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS & LINKAGES: REACHING OUT TO WORK TOGETHER
Module Four is designed to
teach participants some practical collaboration strategies and to begin
developing a personal action plan to create, use, and sustain community
partnerships and linkages for the good of their clients.
Competency
1: Participants
can identify practical strategies to use in creating, using, and sustaining
community partnerships and linkages.
Competency
2: Participants
can strategize on ways of preparing to approach and work with potential
collaborators.
Objective
2.1: Participants
will develop a personal action plan for achieving successful partnerships.
Handout and Transparency 4.1:
Some Practical Collaboration Strategies
Handout and Transparency 4.2:
My Personal Action Plan
Overhead
Projector
1 Flip Chart
(for trainer)
Masking
Tape
Say the following:
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In Module 1, we learned why community partnerships and
linkages are so important.
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In Module 2, we defined community partnerships and linkages,
looked at the different kinds of partnerships, and learned who our potential
partners are.
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In Module 3, we began learning HOW to create, use, and
sustain community partnerships, beginning with assessments—assessment of your
own agency, mapping and assessing resources in your catchment area, and assessing
the culture of potential partnership agencies.
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In Module 4, we are going to study some practical collaboration
strategies that will be helpful to you in your work, and then incorporate
them and other ideas into your own personal action plan.
Say and do the following:
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So let's begin by looking at seven different practical
collaboration strategies you might use to create, use, and sustain community
partnerships.
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Refer participants to Handout
4.1: Some Practical Collaboration Strategies
and place Transparency 4.1 on the overhead projector. Tell participants
that Handout 4.1 has room for them to record notes.
Explain the following:
It is difficult for a worker to collaborate with
other providers and other stakeholder groups on his/her own and in an agency
that does not value community partnerships and linkages. Collaboration is a
shared responsibility. It is equally hard for an agency's staff to collaborate
with other agencies and organizations if collaboration is not valued and
practiced in the community.
Ask the following:
What are some ways you can promote implementing
this particular strategy?
Generate responses that could include:
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Invite other units, organizations,
and community stakeholders to attend division meetings.
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Create a collaboration team
that meets to discuss strategies to increase collaboration between unit members,
the division, and the department.
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Create a "community collaboration
team" composed of other agencies and stakeholder groups to ensure that
agencies and stakeholder groups are working together.
Explain the following:
Public child welfare agencies can't do their job
alone. It is important that local groups ³buy in² and feel ownership for child
safety, permanence, and well-being. Remember that these local groups will buy
into this agenda if you are able to present it in a way that helps meet their
own needs and purposes.
Explain the following:
When you want to improve workers' skills in creating,
using, and sustaining community linkages, you can often turn to other workers.
There may be workers in your own division or department who are really good at
using community resources and creating community partnerships. Other workers
can ³shadow² them when they go to meetings or other agencies to see and learn
what they do.
Ask the following:
Can you identify individuals in the community who
are experienced in building teams and linkages?
What are some examples of successful partnerships
in your community?
Explain the following:
There are people in the community or state who are
experienced and talented in building teams and community linkages. Invite them
to give a presentation on building partnerships during staff or unit meetings.
Ask them to give information and encourage discussion on how to make sure that
the key players are at the table, and on what the individual roles and
responsibilities of participants should be. Ask them to give examples of
successful local partnerships.
Explain the following:
One of the biggest barriers to accessing the array of
services clients may need is lack of knowledge about what already exists in a
neighborhood and community. These include services and supports that are both
formal and informal, provided by both traditional and non-traditional health,
education, and human services groups and neighborhood networks.
Ask the following:
Do you have a formal method of identifying
resources in your community?
Explain the following:
Often the best way to get this information is for workers
in an agency to divide up the work and "pound the pavement"—meet
with peers in other organizations, get information about their services, and
form working relationships with them. Another option is to ask a community
organization or agency to highlight their services during a unit or department
meeting
Explain the following:
Once you and your co-workers have learned about the
resources in your neighborhood and community and the potential partnerships
with other providers and community stakeholders, it's important to share that
information with each other and colleagues who can use this information.
Ask the following:
How do workers in your unit, department, or agency
share information on resources?
Generate responses that may include:
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Word of mouth
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Resource guide that is updated
regularly
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Shared database of resources
Explain the following:
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Remember it is important that
workers are aware of tools such as resource guides and databases. There is
no point in establishing a concrete method of sharing information if staff
are unaware of it and consequently don't use it.
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Sharing resources should go
beyond your unit or department.
You should identify other units that would find this information useful. This
practice of sharing helps to facilitate collaboration among agency workers.
Explain the following:
Creating, using, and sustaining community
partnerships and linkages requires each worker, unit, division, and department
to set clear goals with a clear timeline to achieve them (for example,
quarterly, semi-annually, annually), and plans to update the goals on a regular
basis. It's important to make sure that these goals fit with the aims of the
participating partners.
Goals should be realistic, achievable, and embraced
by workers.
Give the following as example goals:
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Targeting specific service
sectors (for example, health, mental health, substance abuse) where you have
not successfully achieved a partnership so that your clients can access services
they need. Goal setting includes developing a strategy to achieve the goal—for
example, exactly what is your strategy to work more effectively with the mental
health system?
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Increasing collaboration with
another service sector where you have been moderately successful.
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Working with other community
partners to figure out how to fill a service gap that exists in your neighborhood
and community and is adversely affecting your clients.
Explain the following:
Based on the goals you set, identify indicators for
success. Agree on a set of indicators and how to measure them. For each goal,
each worker, unit, division, and department needs to specify how they will
know the goal has been successfully achieved. For example: "All of our
clients who need mental health services are now able to access them in a timely
way."
Say
and do the following:
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I'm one who believes that training
is pretty meaningless unless it leads to new behavior, like implementing the
skills and strategies learned in the training.
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This is the time in the training
to begin working on developing your own personal action plan—what you are
going to do and how are you going to do it to improve your community partnerships
and linkages when you return to your agency.
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Refer participants to Handout
4.2: My Personal Action Plan
and place Transparency 4.2 on the overhead projector.
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In this exercise, I'd like
you to choose three areas of your relationship with an agency/organization
you identified as having a challenging or non-existing relationship. Take your mind back to the exercise we
did in Module 3 in mapping and assessing neighborhood resources. Remember the red and yellow dots? Remember the dotted lines and crossed-out
lines and non-existent lines between your agency and specific community resources?
Maybe you want to begin your personal action plan there, around what
you discovered in that exercise.
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So you list the three areas
of your relationship with an agency/organization you identified as having
a challenging or non-existent relationship in column one. In column two, you need to identify the
strategies and actions you will do to make this improvement. Think about the seven practical collaboration
strategies we just reviewed (refer to Handout
4.1: Some Practical Collaboration Strategies). Perhaps some of those may help you with
column two.
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In the last column, you should
record how you will know you are successful in making each of the three improvements.
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Any questions?
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Why don't you take 15 minutes
now to work on your plan.
When
participants have finished working on their personal action plan, say the
following:
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You put a lot of good work
and effort into developing your personal action plan.
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Now I'd like each of you to
select a colleague—someone you respect and trust—and share your plan with
your colleague. When you've finished,
let your colleague share his or her plan with you. You should feel free to offer each other
your ideas about the plans.
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Take about 15 minutes to have
this discussion.
When
participants have finished sharing their personal action plans, convene again
as a large group and say the following:
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What was this exercise like
for you—both developing your plan and sharing it with a colleague?
After participants have shared their thoughts and feelings about the
exercise, say the following:
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There is one other subject
we need to cover before we close out today's training. It would be unfair to you to complete this
training with you thinking that you alone are responsible for creating community
partnerships and linkages.
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As a child welfare worker,
you do have a responsibility
to undertake community partnerships and linkages. After all, these are really needed by your
families if they are going to be successful in keeping their children safe,
in permanent homes, and thriving.
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But you can't do it alone. Promoting,
using, and sustaining community partnerships is the responsibility of front-line
workers. But it is also the responsibility
of supervisors and of agency administrators as well. Each of these three kinds of child welfare
workers has his or her own roles and responsibilities in creating and sustaining
community collaboration.
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Let's brainstorm together what
each person's roles and responsibilities are.
Place
Transparency 4.3: Community Partnership Roles
and Responsibilities of Workers, Supervisors, and Administrators on the overhead projector. Refer
participants to Handout 4.3. Brainstorm
together and record participants' ideas.
Ask participants to record people's ideas on their handout.
Example of Handout 4.3:
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Front-Line Workers' Roles and Responsibilities |
Supervisors' Roles and Responsibilities |
Agency Administrators' Roles and Responsibilities |
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