Creating New Governance Structures
(Fall 1994 Networkshop)
From Local Enterprise...
Keynote speaker, Martin Gerry, directs a "joint enterprise collaboration model" intended to demonstrate how neighborhood-based reform can reverse negative trends for children and families. The ASCEND project is located in two Austin, Texas neighborhoods radically affected by poverty, delinquency, substance abuse, and unemployment.
Mr. Gerry framed the issue of creating new governance structures by discussing key elements of successful collaboration at the local level, where many of the learnings to date have been derived. These can inform state policymakers as they work to design statewide initiatives that have, at their core, a vision for the collaborative delivery of education, health, and social services to children and families where they live--in their schools and communities. For local collaborative enterprises, strategy development begins with finding a common goal for children. Responsibility for achieving the goal is shared by child- and family-service professionals. Although current federal and state funding procedures make it difficult sometimes to focus on shared goals and outcomes, this process is essential to effective collaboration.
A corollary to the importance of goal setting is the necessity to develop a broad-based collaboration. Certain groups are of primary importance:
- Parents. Although there is a widespread assumption that state
agencies should solve children's problems, the adoption of this
attitude by professional service providers feeds an unhealthy sense of
detachment in parents. Children are a mutual concern for providers and
parents; they can--and should--represent a shared focus for
establishing collaborations.
- Caregivers. In the current cooperative approach, a child is
metaphorically placed on a train at birth and run from station to
station where agents (caregivers, teachers, service providers) get on
and off. Collaboration at static transition points such as school entry
results in loss of cumulative expertise in working with a family and
child. In a joint enterprise, shared knowledge of and rapport with a
family can develop. Common sense and sound practice support the
importance of including caregivers in the collaboration early on and in
an ongoing manner.
- Businesses. General economic growth in an area will not solve
problems of poverty and may actually disadvantage the unemployed whose
marginal skills become insufficient or obsolete. Securing full adult
employment is essential in family and neighborhood rehabilitation. In
Austin, for example, The University of Texas has made a substantial
contribution to ASCEND as an employer.
- The criminal justice system. Inclusion of less than obvious groups in collaborative efforts may be important in certain localities. Collaboration with the criminal justice system in particular is often advisable. In the neighborhoods targeted by ASCEND, for example, 60 percent of males ages 16 through 25 experience incarceration--and for male children in foster care, the correlation with potential future incarceration is 97 percent.
Beyond goal setting and identifying the "right" participants in collaborative efforts, Gerry asserted that development of new service capacities is essential. ASCEND plans to establish Youth Opportunity Centers to provide neighborhood-based after-school and recreation programs for adolescents and transition programs for returning juvenile offenders. Such services can be woven together with a variety of programs requested by neighborhood residents.
Program funding is a fourth issue of concern. ASCEND, which serves about 10,000 people (including 6,000 children), is funded by grants from the Annie E. Casey, Carnegie, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations. Although grants are an important source of initial funding, there is a tendency for charitable foundations to support isolated projects in scattered sites for limited periods of time. Therefore, government should be viewed as the source of "hard dollars" for project development, while foundations may provide "soft dollars" for activities unlikely to receive government funding.
Accountability to the community served is necessary in order to gain the "real buy-in" of the community and, ultimately, continued support of funding agencies. Gerry said that one way ASCEND gains community trust and commitment is through active involvement with neighborhood organizations, churches, and Austin Interfaith. Attitude toward the task is also of primary importance, particularly to the families served. If it is true that many families have been "shammed, slammed, and scammed" by project "hustlers" over the last twenty years, it is all the more true that project workers must see their task as one of trust-building, which must be approached with "patience and humility." One ASCEND mechanism for building trust and involvement of community members is its comprehensive family advocacy services program, which trains neighborhood residents as family advocates and links them with families through a voucher system. This plan has the effect of rewarding success, giving families voice in their own affairs and allowing them to express their needs--needs little understood at any level of government, according to Gerry.
Political buy-in is a final key to successful collaboration. Governmental support for locally-initiated programs is critical and can be obtained by those that demonstrate effectiveness. ASCEND deals both with the state and with four levels of local government--Travis county, the mayor's office, the Austin city council and city manager's office, and the school district. The task of including diverse interests in collaboration is already complex. When those interests represent multiple levels of government, the task is further complicated by politics. It cannot always be assumed that the cooperation of local agency directors represents enduring political commitment at the top.
...to State Initiative
California, Colorado, and Kentucky are creating new governance structures as a key component of their school-linked initiatives to improve the education, health, and well-being of children. Presenters described their states' unique experiences in initiating systemic change and forming new governance structures at the state and local levels.