State Child Welfare Policy Guide: Part of the Policy Matters Series

15. Interagency Collaboration

Interagency collaborations  enable agencies to develop creative cross-agency strategies to shared problems or populations. Many child welfare collaborations involve another single agency, such as domestic violence or substance abuse agencies.  However, to broadly address the external influences on child welfare’s goals of safety, permanency and well-being of children and families a larger collaborative effort is needed, given that relevant partners to child welfare’s outcomes include multiple state agencies. State-level coordinating structures may be “the cheaper, faster and better alternative for affecting cross-system, cross-outcome change”. [i] Such as Pennsylvania’s Cabinet on Children and Families which was established to coordinate and streamline government services for children and families.  The cabinet is made up of the secretaries of Public Welfare, Education, Health, and Labor and Industry; the Secretary of the Budget; the Insurance Commissioner; the directors of the Office of Health Care Reform and the Governor's Office of Policy; the Governor's Chief of Staff; and the chairpersons of the Juvenile Court Judges' Commission and the Commission on Crime and Delinquency. Twenty-one states have established Children’s Cabinets or Councils for the purpose of improving services and outcomes for children and families.  These partnerships allow agency leaders to:   

• Plan for improvements;

• Convene key stakeholders;

• Establish a vision;

• Provide leadership;

• Identify and coordinate financial resources;

• Provide support for training and technical assistance;

• Identify existing budget assets and gaps;

• Identify and interpret resources uses, restrictions and reporting requirements;

• Ensure accountability and outcomes; and

• Develop interagency agreements.