Inter-Agency Collaboration

Inter-agency collaboration may be an effective way to improve services for those families involved with both the child welfare and substance abuse treatment service systems. This study addresses the practice of inter-agency collaboration and assesses how collaborative practices vary both between and within organizations. Agency administrators (n = 20) and frontline staff (n = 216) in child welfare and substance abuse treatment agencies were surveyed about organizational policies regarding inter-agency collaboration and specific collaborative practices. Results from multi-level models suggest that the level of collaborative practice varies within organizations and that staff perceptions of policy toward collaboration are a stronger predictor of collaborative practice than are administrator reports of agency policy toward collaboration. Findings have implications for the conceptualization and measurement of inter-agency collaboration and for efforts to transfer new practices into routine settings.