Creating New Governance Structures
(Fall 1994 Networkshop)
Introduction
"What we're looking for is community."
- Networkshop Participant
Presenters at Southwest Educational Development Laboratory's Regional Policy Analysts' and Advisors' Winter 1993 Networkshop told provocative stories. In San Diego, California more than $6 million of state funds from various public agencies were directed to the children and families in a single elementary school attendance area. In Durango, Colorado a mother entangled in family support problems concluded she must quit her job and divorce her husband to make the system work for, rather than against, her children's best interests. In Kentucky, after the state's Supreme Court ordered school reform in 1989, the legislature bypassed the Department of Education in designing a sweeping reform program, with tax increases of $1.3 billion the first biennium.
Bryan Sperry, former Deputy Commissioner of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, summarized the crisis that confronts many states' systems of service delivery:
- Accessing services requires a nearly full-time effort from many
families.
- The same client information must be provided over and over again, from
agency to agency.
- Services are provided categorically.
- Family focus is lacking.
- Preventive focus is lacking.
- Services are duplicated in many areas and are unavailable in others.
One response to these problems is the development of new governance structures to help coordinate state systems and integrate local service delivery. These new structures not only involve collaboration among government agencies at every level; they also extend into the private sector and communities.
On November 14-15, 1993, representatives from SEDL's Regional Policy Analysts' and Advisors' Network, joined by the Oklahoma Commission on Children and Youth and the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, met at the Stouffer Hotel in Austin, Texas to consider why and how states are creating new governance structures. The Networkshop, Creating New Governance Structures, began with an introduction to the context and concepts underlying a local collaborative enterprise in Texas, ASCEND (the Austin Strategy for Comprehensive Economic and Neighborhood Development). Martin Gerry, director of the project, suggested that learnings from local pilots such as ASCEND can provide a "process model" for statewide system reform initiatives.
Networkshop participants then learned how three states have designed and implemented statewide reforms that include the creation of new advisory or governance structures to direct local and state action toward improving education, health, and social outcomes for children and families--California's Healthy Start, Colorado's Family and Children's Initiative, and Kentucky's Family Resource and Youth Services Centers. State-level presenters from these initiatives then discussed four elements of governance that present challenges to decisionmakers as they attempt to develop and implement more comprehensive, integrated service systems: decisionmaking, service delivery capacity, funding, and accountability. Finally, participants engaged in roundtable discussions of "burning issues" related to these governance elements.