Transforming Together: Implementation Guide
Moving Beyond Managing an Initiative to Leading Full Systems-Change The interagency leadership structure and function–and the Ecosystem of Care it works to develop–has value and impact well beyond any single initiative and should not be contingent on or driven by individual reform or opportunity. It must be institutionalized. Collective, cross-agency leadership facilitates individual agencies in transforming, aligning, and maximizing their deeply interdependent child, youth, and family initiatives and programs. We invite leaders to recognize that this Whole Child approach demands seeing and embracing every reform not as a narrow transaction or initiative between their department and the state or federal funding entity–exchanging dollars for compliance– but as an opportunity to fit the dollars into a continuum of wholeness, intentionally leveraging prior and future initiatives. Moreover, leaders have the opportunity to recognize that vision, structure, and functions to implement systems-change are all interrelated. The ILT cannot just focus on one element alone–its vision should inform and be informed by the system’s new functions; its structures should both hold and adapt in response to the vision; and its functions should be supported by and sustain the vision. The key for system leaders is to see this deep interdependence, and then patiently and persistently adapt their vision, structures and function through ongoing quality control and improvement towards realization of the collective legacy they want for children, youth and families.
Strategies for Building Cross-Agency Leadership and Collaboration In California, most policymakers and agency leaders agree that high levels of collaboration between organizations are necessary for improving systems and family and youth outcomes. However, collaboration and coordination are hard work: They require up-front time to synthesize different goals, assumptions, and approaches into a new, shared approach, and they require ongoing attention and problem-solving as new processes and activities are tested and rolled out. Tool Spotlight : Counties can review the examples of Successful Multi-Agency Collaborations to see how other jurisdictions have structured governance and partnerships. These case examples provide concrete illustrations of what cross-agency collaboration can look like in practice. To begin this hard work of developing a new Ecosystem of Care, agency leaders and ILT and EAC members can consider the suggestions below.
Collaboration and coordination are hard work: They require upfront time to synthesize different goals, assumptions, and approaches into a new, shared approach, and they require ongoing attention and problem-solving.
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