Promoting Collaboration Among National Child Welfare and Mental Health Organizations

It takes true collaboration to steer system reform efforts and commit to integrated service delivery systems. To this end, the child welfare initiative at the TA Center supports collaboration with and among key national child welfare, mental health, and family organizations. The TA Center acts as a resource to these organizations, facilitates communication among them, and assists their workgroups in collaborative activities.

The TA Center facilitated "A Partnership for Action", a project of the National Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators (NAPCWA), the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD), and the Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health. Through this "Partnership for Action" national organizations, states, and communities identified common values, principles, concerns, strategies for effective collaboration, and recommended practices to enhance partnerships between child welfare, mental health and families. The products below, which describe these efforts and project findings, are available from the National TA Center:

• Child Welfare, Children's Mental Health, and Families: A Partnership for Action (1996)
• Collaboration Basics: Strategies from Six Communities Engaged in Collaborative Efforts Among Families, Child Welfare and Children's Mental Health (1999)

In 2004, the TA Center assisted a workgroup made up of members of the Children, Youth and Family Division (CYFD) of the NASMHPD and NAPCWA, an affiliate of the American Public Human Services Association, to plan and conduct a series of 3 national teleconference calls:

• Cross-System Collaboration in the Child and Family Services Review Process (2/26/04)
• Building Community-Based Mental Health Services to Prevent Unnecessary Relinquishment of Parental Custody (4/7/04)
• President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health - Cross System Implications (National View) (New Mexico)

Workgroups from these two organization are convening to establish goals for working together in 2005 and beyond.

Questions?
Contact Jan McCarthy, Director of Child Welfare Policy, National TA Center for Children's Mental Health, jrm33@georgetown.edu, 202/687-5062.

Louise Johnson, Chair CYFD Workgroup, LKJ40@CO.DMH.STATE.SC.US

David Sanders, Chair NAPCWA Workgroup, dsanders@dcfs.co.la.ca.us