In the election just held, as in the past several national elections, we have repeatedly heard the phrase 'family values' as a way of defining the candidates' positions. The candidates themselves have used this phrase as a means of showing the depth of their caring for the people of this nation. But somewhere along the way, the reality of the day-to-day lives of our children and their families was lost in the rhetoric and among the campaign slogans and accusations. The bright shining pictures of children playing and families strolling hand-in-hand and the darker images of children abusing drugs, together presented a very limited and misleading picture of what really occurs in the everyday lives of families. While there are many families whose lives are filled with lovely sunlit strolls through green, tree covered parks and friendly, loving dinner tables laden with nutritious and well-prepared meals, there are many other families whose lives are not so idyllic. These families often have children as members too. And children who live in families where life is much different from those images presented as the ideal must often contend on a daily basis with issues like poverty, hunger, violence, drug use, isolation, inadequate housing and clothing, abuse and neglect, depression, divorce, and hundreds of other obstacles that many of us cannot even imagine.

How bad are the problems children face? Among the quantifiable, there are several different measuring sticks. According to the Children's Defense Fund, as quoted in Counseling Children by Thompson and Rudolph (1992, p 4):

• Every day, 2989 American children see their parents divorced.
• Every 26 seconds, a child runs away from home.
• Every 47 seconds, a child is abused or neglected.
• Every seven minutes, a child is killed or injured by guns.
• Every 53 minutes, a child dies because of poverty.
• Every day, 100,000 children are homeless.
• Every school day, 134,000 children bring guns to school.
• Every eight seconds of the school day, a child drops out of school.
• Every day, six teenagers commit suicide.

But problems are not limited to children as victims, but also, children as criminals: According to the 1990 US Census, in 1988, 28,200 males under 18 years of age were arrested for serious crimes such as murder, forcible rape, robbery, and assault. Another 14,200 were arrested for less serious crimes (fraud, forgery, vandalism, and others). (Thompson and Rudolph, 1993)

Where do we find these children? The problems children face are often first seen by the world outside of their families when they begin school. School is a place where children are often expected to put all of the outside problems aside and commit themselves to the tasks involved in learning. Unfortunately, we expect a child who is dealing with problems such as hunger or abuse, or who is an observer of domestic violence, to put these things aside when he or she enters the classroom. This expectation is an unrealistic one. And yet to expect a child to do so day after day, with only his or her own limited coping skills is exactly what we do. We expect a child to focus on academic pursuits, while at home, their families, and often their lives, are falling apart.

To say that we should suspect that these children will have difficulty learning is an extreme understatement. To suspect that these 'at-risk' children will complete twelve years of school is at best unrealistic and short-sighted. Twenty-five percent of US young people drop out of high school before graduation; in many urban areas the dropout rate is more than 50%. Students with low-income, low-skill, low-education families are about three times as likely to drop out of school as students from wealthy families (22% v. 7%). (McWhirter, McWhirter, McWhirter, & McWhirter, 1993, p. 5)

The act of dropping out can have serious repercussions for the child's future. The census cited above also found that overall, the mean earned by high school dropouts was $11,256 (nationwide), compared to $17,072 for high school graduates. In 1990, high school dropouts earned, on average, one tenth the monthly income of Americans with professional degrees. (Roberts, 1995, p. 240) And the prospects were grimmest for Black high school dropouts: by the end of the decade of the 1980s, nearly 86 percent were either jobless or were paid below the poverty threshold. (Roberts, 1995, p. 217)

What can schools do to help? "Traditionally, public schools have been structured primarily to achieve academic goals. But increasingly our schools are finding that before their students can achieve, emotional, social and health needs must be addressed. In fact, many schools have complained that despite dwindling resources for the most basic programs, they have been forced to serve as surrogate families and social service agencies to their students - often at the expense of education." (The Children's Aid Society of New York)

Organizations have for decades formed partnerships or collaboratives among social service agencies to enhance delivery of service, provide a team approach to multiple problem groups, individuals or families, and influence policy. (Bailey, D. & Koney, K.M. 1996) Multidisciplinary team approaches were developed, often for developing and implementing a treatment plan mandated by federal regulation (IEP) or accreditation/standards agencies (JCAHO, Medicare, CSWE). A collaboration is defined in several ways, reflecting different orientations. "Collaboration is a process through which parties who see different aspects of a problem can constructively explore their differences and search for solutions that go beyond their own limited visions of what is possible." (Gray, B.P. 1989) An interorganizational collaboration is a group of independent organizations who are committed to working together for specific purposes and tangible outcomes while maintaining their own autonomy." (Abramson, J.S., and & Rosenthal, B. 1995)

Collaborations ideally share a common vision of the desired ends or goals. (Abramson, J.S., and & Rosenthal, B. 1995) Their purpose or essence is organized around reaching these shared goals. To do so they share expertise, tasks, resources and rewards. They may also share interdisciplinary educational and in-service training experiences. The latter may be through an educational institution or under the auspices of the involved agencies and organizations.

A more recent trend is for funding agencies to insist on evidence of community involvement in planning, consumer involvement in planning and/or governing bodies, and participatory involvement of clients, patients or consumers in developing a treatment plan, executing that plan, and assessing the success of the plan.

Finally, "[c]ommunity building refers to activities, practices, and policies that support and foster positive connections among individuals, groups, organizations, neighborhoods, and geographic and functional communities." The Committee for Economic Development (1995) defined community building as "an on-going comprehensive effort that strengthens the norms, supports, and problem-solving resources of the community." (Weil, M., 1995) These activities are on-going and serve both to support the existing collaborative efforts and to identify emergent or overlooked problems appropriate to the goals of the collaborative.

Despite widely held popular views to the contrary, research strongly indicates that people wish to live in communities with supportive environments and would like to participate in and contribute to their communities. (Weil, M., 1995) Although specific, identified problems differ among communities, most communities will identify the promotion of healthy, well-educated children and the promotion of families able to parent competently and appropriately as one shared community goal. The institution traditionally singled out to fulfill part of this goal is the school. Schools directly serve more children in a community than any other agency or institution. Thus a school linked collaboration with services based at or near the school has been a model chosen for a large number of community collaborations and partnerships. In the 1992-93 school year, Dryfoos (1994) estimated conservatively that at least 500 school based or linked health and social service programs were functioning in the US. He listed for that period twenty-six in Arkansas, nine in Mississippi, three in Tennessee, five in Louisiana, three in Missouri, and nineteen in Texas. (You may notice that Arkansas and Mississippi, often ranked high in poverty and low on monies for both school and social service programs, are moving more rapidly to develop and implement these programs.) (Dryfoos, J.P., 1994) Many of these programs have more than one of the following components: health care delivery, mental health or therapeutic services, and a social work focus which involves direct services to children, families and educators, and other consultation, advocacy and education roles.

Many of these programs which serve at least some groups of children and adolescents identified as 'at-risk' may also serve children with diagnosed disabilities, further complicating the role of the classroom teacher. One key area of service provision is facilitating inclusion for the latter group of children. This education movement has received impetus from the federal legislation governing education for children with disabilities and is premised on 'least restrictive environment' and a philosophy that "children with disabilities benefit when they are educated in age appropriate general classroom settings." (Pryor, C.B., Kent, C., McGunn, C., & LeRoy, B., 1996)

An 'at-risk' student is identified by the Goals 2000: Educate America Act of 1994 as one "who because of limited English proficiency, poverty, race, geographic location, or economic disadvantage, faces a greater risk of low educational achievement or reduced academic expectations." (US House of Representatives Report 103-446, pp. 99-100) Other definitions adopted in popular parlance and by many states "signal a general consensus that the concept also encompasses students who are at risk of not being prepared to be successful participants in adult life, especially as related to employment" (Internet: Evolution of the Concept of at Risk, p.1). More than 'drop-outs,' they also include young people whose prospects for becoming productive members of the community in their other roles (parent, spouse, group member and citizen) are dim.

What is "Title IV-E?" Title IV-E is a part of the overall federal approach to the provision of public child welfare. It is a result of federal mandates that states provide services with a basic focus on family preservation rather than relying on random and poorly structured foster care. It is funded through the Social Security Administration, and in Arkansas has been used to reform our system of public child welfare, with training for bachelor level students, masters level students, and newly employed pubic child welfare workers, and in-service for current employees of the system.

What has the ambitious Break the Mold/Title IV-E collaboration done to try to help? "Because educational services are linked to social work and health care services in schools that are part of these systems, the schools shift from being child-centered to being child- and family-centered facilities. This child-and-family-centered, community development approach involves nothing short of re-inventing schools, community agencies, and their relationships." (Hooper-Briar, p. 116) This author goes further, discussing the changes needed at the university level to implement and model collaborative behavior in training and research areas of education, health, social work, criminal justice, and other human service professions. Otherwise, those entering these fields will be limited (at-risk) in terms of being able to function fully and with comfort in the collaborations and integrated systems that are emerging. (Hooper-Blair, p. 117)

But how does it work? The Henderson State University based Title IV-E project is a partner in one such collaboration. This project, based in HSU's Sociology/Human Services department within the Ellis College of Arts and Sciences, works with the School of Education's Break the Mold program, and with the Arkansas Department of Human Services/Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS). It utilizes the professional expertise of faculty from the fields of nursing, sociology, criminal justice, family and consumer sciences (formerly known as home economics), and psychology. Training for all human services graduates includes a 'block' placement, specified as a four day per week experience in a human services setting. The students who participate in HSU's Title IV-E project spend two of those days in a Break the Mold partner school and two in the corresponding DCFS county office. They receive a $3,000 stipend over the semester of the placement, and in return are committed to employment with DCFS for one year after their graduation. Nursing students have also been involved in settings where an RN was available for their supervision, as required by Arkansas standards.

The primary result for HSU's human services interns has been an increased awareness of the value of delivery of services in a school setting. Students attend meetings with teacher interns, and take advantage of the resulting opportunity for sharing and collaboration. An additional result has been an increased awareness on the part of each group of the skills and responsibilities of the other. We anticipate that over time, through these cooperative efforts, needed social services can be more effectively provided for students and families who might previously have 'fallen through the cracks.' (Green, C., McGaughey, C., Roebuck, J., Green, P., Weiner, C. 1996)

"Collaborative programs both in training internships and in the public school enhance preventative and identified services, decrease turf fights, decrease barriers for referral by teachers, increase positive perceptions of referrals by teachers and administrators, and are cost effective in providing a spectrum of services to children, families, and communities." (conversation; Roebuck, J.)

"Providing social work direct services in schools and having collaborative internships facilitates dealing with the child in a holistic manner, utilizing the strengths and expertise of both teaching and social work. The expertise of social workers enhances the educational milieu for teachers, students, and families. It relieves the stress levels of teachers and interns by delineating expectations and empowers teachers in their areas of expertise. Teachers can focus on student success and not failures. The social worker's expertise in multi-cultural aspects of the students served can assist the teacher in increasing their expectations for their minority students with comfort and support. We know that children who arrive in kindergarten ready for that level of learning are those with the greatest chance of continued success. We know that learning that takes place prior to entry into schools can be enhanced by parenting programs which can be done by social workers working with schools. When parenting skills are improved, the self-esteem of parents increases which facilitates their working with their own children throughout the child's school experiences. Programs can also be started which increase parents' pre-school involvement in reading to their children We know that children who come from families in which reading is important and regular are more likely to experience success in their own academic life.

Involvement of both teacher and social work interns in a collaborative effort enhances their awareness of the roles of each, and decreases the potential of each to engage in turf wars for possession of the child. It also gives them increased awareness and experience in working with collaborative efforts to enhance the holistic approach to children and families in the educational setting." (conversation; Caldwell, A.)

Approaches to collaborations range from informal relations (characterized by little commitment, minimum planning, and minimum impact) through coordination (some commitment to formal linkages with some joint community planning and outreach which provides some additional services and addresses some limited student problems) to partnerships (with more formal contracts and training of staff in both disciplines on roles and functions; additional programs and resources are developed and linked to larger community systems) to collaboration (major formal commitment involving comprehensive planning between schools and human services, on-going interprofessional education, administrative leadership of both schools and human services, new personnel, allocation of funds/space and time, development of new programs and resources) to a final state of integration (marked by significant formal commitment at both state and local level, comprehensive state level planning with local input, interprofessional education and interdisciplinary teamwork across all levels of the system, redefinition and redistribution of resources and shared initiatives, additional funding, total reform of both structure and process to produce second order change, maximum benefit, with new and better service systems. [Second order change is change in the basic philosophy and organization of a system. (Franklin, C. and Streeter, C. 1995)]

"School reform and the restructuring of human services are individually trying to address the need for systemic changes in the institutions that serve children and families. Many proponents of these changes point out that schools are a natural place for human services activities because they provide maximum access to the majority of children and families. Current reform efforts are placing renewed emphasis on the linkage of public schools and human service agencies to address significant social problems." (Franklin, C. and Streeter. C. 1995)

How does Title IV-E collaborate with Break the Mold and school reform? The current Title IV-E project at HSU has a number of components. First is the use of an academic collaboration to enhance planning and multidisciplinary involvement. Members of a Collaborative Committee are drawn from the campus departments of Sociology/Human Services, Education, Nursing, Psychology, and Family & Consumer Sciences. Meetings are held about every six weeks during the semester in which the students are in their field experience. Members are encouraged to contribute to curriculum development, field work in-service, planning, and development of collaborative linkages. One new component this year is requiring that the human services interns join the listserv through which information is supplied to the education interns of the Break the Mold program. This inclusion provides a method for improving communication and increasing levels of interdepartmental participation.

Title IV-E's student intern population has increased from six its first year, to this year's eight. More importantly, the number of applicants doubled after the student 'grapevine' reported positive outcomes for the first academic year. Faculty from Sociology/Human Services and from the School of Education are involved in interviewing potential stipend students, as are administrators from DCFS. Students are 25% minority, and 25% non-traditional.

Academic work includes cultural diversity, basics of group work, basic family intervention, ethics, using the Internet for research, assessing the potential for lethality in family intervention, safety training, and documentation. Journalizing will be used extensively by all students, both for self-awareness and to assess mutual problems encountered in field work.

Students receive both direct individual field work supervision and group supervision at their field placements. Placements during the spring semester of 1997 are anticipated to include a minimum of two students at each site to allow for peer support. Students receive orientation sessions prior to beginning actual placement to cover forms, policy and procedure at DCFS. They also meet with former stipend students for a session mixing formal and informal contact, and with the teacher interns and supervisors for a session involving their role in a public school. One new aspect of field work will be the development of a resource directory for each area served. These directories will be formalized, and made available in each school served both during and after the placements.

A second new aspect will be the parenting groups which students will co-lead during the semester. The focus of these groups will be on training parents in parenting skills, and on becoming leaders of parent support groups themselves so that the process can continue after the semester. "There is increasing evidence that early intervention (prior to K) produces long-term benefits when multi-component, intensive, long-term intervention involves both children and parents in areas of academic achievement among children from low-income families. The best single predictor of academic performance is early academic performance. This is usually true regardless of a child's social status, gender or race." (Durlak, J., 1995) Beginning parenting programs for community parents, even for those whose children are not yet of school age, is one aspect of early intervention which can be done by school social workers. Training others in parenting skills is an area in which educators are not specifically trained, nor has it been traditionally within the purview of classroom teachers. Teachers will be encouraged to attend, and even to become volunteer trainers. Prevention of abuse, referral for developmental/ educational delays, identification of family/child medical needs, and offering supportive services at a time when families are 'voluntary' clients increases the possible positive effects, while limiting resistance.

Has it been successful so far? It is important to recognize that a variety of cooperative, multidisciplinary field placements are found each year for the Title IV-E stipend students in the six institutions around Arkansas which participate in the program. Some are in the juvenile courts, others in health settings, still others in private non-profit agencies. The statewide contractor is currently in the process of developing a rigorous evaluation plan. But we at Henderson State feel very strongly that this collaborative effort has already begun to pay off. Our area of the state is already experimenting with the placement of Family Service Worker Is (entry level social workers) in public schools as their primary work site - an assignment which we see as validating this undergraduate placement as a very successful one in the eyes of the students and of their potential future employers.

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