Increasing+Community+Involvement

= =  Increasing Community Involvement in Schools  Second Edition Authors: Ellen Anderson and Kelly Spegel [|First Edition] Authors: Craig Barnhart and Adrienne Cox

**//"School-community partnerships can weave together a critical mass of resources and strategies to enhance caring communities//** **//that support all youth and their families and enable success at school and beyond."//**

**- Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA ** []

Definitions of School-Community Partnerships
According to Welch and Sheridan (1995):

"Partnerships between schools and communities involve "an interactive exchange of ideas, resources, services, and expertise between educational and non-educational agencies in a variety of settings that mutually address the needs of students and the community as a whole." These partnerships are most beneficial when they are collaborative, empowering, proactive and flexible. According to the Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA: [|www.tanweir.net] "School-community partnerships often are referred to as collaborations. Optimally, such partnerships formally blend together resources of at least one school and sometimes a group of schools or an entire school district with resources ina given neighborhood or the larger community. The intent is to sustain such partnerships over time. The range of entities in a community are not limited to agencies and organization; they encompass people, businesses, community based organizations, postsecondary institutions, religious and civic groups, programs at parks and libraries, and any other facilities that can be used for recreation, learning, enrichment, and support." [|عروض بنده, عروض العثيم , عروض كارفور , عروض الدانوب , عروض جرير , عروض اكسترا]

**Characteristics of School-Community Partnerships** ain

[[image:population-based-intervention/1partner.png width="671" height="383"]]
 [|علاج الكلف] [|تشمع الكبد] [|حصى المرارة] [|رجل حامل] [|علاج القشرة] [|مرض الجذام] [|تغذية الطفل الرضيع] [|علاج الحساسية] [|فحص ما قبل الزواج]

**According to researchers, practitioners, and organizations:**
Joyce L. Epstein, director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, provides a brief overview of the importance of building school-family-community partnerships. Listen to the audio file [|here].

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==  Initiating Partnerships

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The goals of initiating partnerships: In order to build community partnerships, the first task is to map the community climate or gage the community’s openness and interest in starting a collaborative effort to address the needs of children and families. The purpose of community mapping is to: There are a number of formal and informal methods for gathering information to map community climate and recruit community partnerships.
 * An increased understanding of the community’s history, the political and social conditions, and the current status of home, school, and community relationships
 * An increased awareness of the needs of children and families in the community
 * More opportunities to meet and interact with other potential partners representing homes, schools, and the community
 * An increased understanding of collaboration and how the community might benefit by forming Home, School, Community Partnerships
 * Identify and recruit key individuals to involve in a partnership
 * Learn about the needs of children and families that motivate people to work collaboratively in a particular community
 * Gather information about the history and current status of relationships among individuals representing home, school, and community.
 * Handshake Meetings
 * Short, small group or one-on-one meetings held with key decision makers to recruit partnerships, identify concerns for children’s’ needs, and gage openness for collaboration.
 * Target Group Meetings
 * Bring together potential partners with similar knowledge bases and affiliations to gage interest in partnerships and gain additional contacts of potential partners.
 * Community Forums
 * Gain insight about politics, concerns, and working relationships in the community as well as introduce home, school, community partnerships and invite participation of interested parties.
 * Cold Calls
 * Telephone and letter invitations to other key players in the community
 * Examples: business representatives, health and social service providers, community college and local university representatives, and other educational agencies

Implementation Based on Partnership and Problem Solving Approach Create a welcoming and friendly climate for partners || Derive working principles for how the program should work || Merge detective/nomothetic and inductive/experiential approaches to planning and implementation || Focus on the strengths of the community || Ensure the necessary hardware and software available for program implementation || Research and evaluate each of the steps ||
 * Steps || Tasks and Processes ||
 * Create partnerships || Include community members and service providers from the community with whom the intervention is to take place
 * Clarify values and vision and derive working principles || Collaboratively clarify values and vision to guide the program
 * Identify and merge the strengths of different partners and approaches || Identify and build on strengths of different partners
 * Define the problem collaboratively || Collaboratively define and analyze the problem in terms of risk and protective factors at multiple ecological levels
 * Develop the program collaboratively || Collaboratively decide on what type of program to implement
 * Research and evaluate collaboratively || Use both deductive (quantitative) and inductive (qualitative) approaches and program evaluation

Three-Tiered Model of Service Delivery The three-tiered model extends the delivery of services to students based upon a collaborative partnership between the school, community, and family. Supports available through agencies and resources in the community are essential to the process of enhancing the academic and social-emotional development of all children. The three tiers of support are visually represented in the figure below.

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Real World Examples of Services Provided via School-Community Partnerships at Each Level

 * = **Level of Service Delivery** ||= **Examples** ||
 * < **Universal Level** || * 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) Program
 * Community learning centers provide support and learning opportunities to children and families during non-school hours and focus upon academic tutoring/enrichment, youth development, and family literacy. Partnerships with community agencies enhance the opportunities and supports available.
 * [|21st CCLC Website]
 * PTA Healthy Lifestyles Program
 * Promotes good nutrition and exercise in the effort to help students make healthy lifestyle choices. PTAs engage students, families, administrators, and community members in programming that encourages the school community to be active and maintain healthy nutritional habits.
 * [|PTA Healthy Lifestyles Website] ||
 * = **Targeted Level** || * Social Skills Interventions or Crisis Counseling
 * Provided by community personnel (from local mental health agencies) within the school to enable immediate access to needed services
 * Cincinnati Reads Program
 * Community volunteers who are trained to tutor reading through the Literacy Network of Greater Cincinnati are matched with kindergarten through fourth grade students who are reading below grade level.
 * [|Cincinnati Reads Website]
 * ACE Mentor Program
 * Design and construction professionals are matched with high school students to guide and encourage interested students through the design, engineering, and building process and to spark their interest in future careers.
 * [|ACE Mentor Program Website] ||
 * = **Intensive Level** || * Wraparound services
 * Comprehensive, intensive treatment plans are developed for individual students and their families through the collaboration of school personnel, family members, and community partners.
 * See this [|Safe and Responsive Schools Link] which discusses wraparound services. (Also, please see the Wraparound Services section below). ||

**The School Psychologist's Role at Each Level**


**Universal Level:** Assist in acquiring external funding and grant writing processes to provide program support. Identify empirically supported health promotion programs and help evaluate the effectiveness of universal level programming in their school/district.**Targeted Level:** Identify students who may benefit from targeted services, share knowledge of evidence-based services, and help coordinate/implement services.**Intensive Level:** Ensure that the critical aspects of target behavior identification, functional behavioral assessments, intervention implementation, and evaluation procedures are conducted with efficacy. Provide therapeutic services to students.

Challenges for School Psychologists

Reduce barriers to participation for partners Learn to value and build relationships || Be open to being challenged by partners Beware of value incongruence and strive to reduce it || Value the experiential knowledge of community partners Find common ground and respect differences to bridge the worlds of community members and professionals || Be open to learning about new perspectives and ways of working from partners || Learn to see community members as valuable partners in research and evaluation Clarify roles of partners ||
 * In creating partnerships || Abandon the role of expert and share power with partners
 * In clarifying values and vision and deriving working principles || Engage in self-reflective analysis of personal values
 * In identifying and merging the strengths of different partners and approaches || Work to overcome self-doubt and Mistrust of community members
 * In defining the problem collaboratively || Reconcile differing views and build consensus regarding prevention program model ||
 * In developing the program collaboratively || Educate and train partners in research and evaluation
 * In researching and evaluating collaboratively || Educate and train partners in research and evaluation

Community Based Models
Wraparound Philosophy

Wraparound is a philosophy of care with a defined planning process used to build constructive relationships and support networks among students and youth with emotional or behavioral disabilities (EBD) and their families. It is community based, culturally relevant, individualized, strength based, and family centered. Wraparound plans are comprehensive and address multiple life domains across home, school, and community, including living environment; basic needs; safety; and social, emotional, educational, spiritual, and cultural needs. Another defining feature of wraparound is that it is unconditional; if interventions are not achieving the outcomes desired by the team, the team regroups to rethink the configuration of supports, services, and interventions to ensure success in natural home, school, and community settings. In other words, students do not fail, but plans can fail. Rather than forcing a student to fit into existing program structures, wraparound is based on the belief that services and supports should be flexibly arranged to meet the unique needs of the students and their families.

Wraparound distinguishes itself from traditional service delivery in special education and mental health with its focus on connecting families, schools, and community partners in effective problem solving relationships. Unique implementation features include (a) family and youth voice guide the design and actions of the team; (b) team composition and strategies reflect unique youth and family strengths and needs; (c) the team establishes the commitment and capacity to design and implement a comprehensive plan over time; and (d) the plan addresses outcomes across home, school, and community through one synchronized plan.Although on the surface wraparound can be seen as similar to the typical special education or mental health treatment planning process, it actually goes much further as it dedicates considerable effort on building constructive relationships and support networks among the youth and his or her family (Burchard, Bruns, & Burchard, 2002; Eber, 2005). This is accomplished by establishing a unique team with each student and the student’s family that is invested in achieving agreed-on quality-of-life indicators. Following a response to intervention (RTI) model in which problem-solving methods become more refined for smaller numbers of students, these more intensive techniques for engagement and team development are needed to ensure that a cohesive wraparound team and plan are formed.The concept of wraparound has been operationalized in numerous forms (Bruns, Suter, Force, & Burchard, 2005; Burchard et al., 2002; Burns & Goldman, 1999; Miles, Bruns, Osher, Walker, & National Wraparound Initiative Advisory Group, 2006). In fact, the absence of an established theoretical framework has contributed to the lack of consistency regarding procedural guidelines for wraparound (J. S. Walker & Schutte, 2004). Arguably, the two theories that are most compatible with wraparound are ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) and environmental ecology theory (Munger, 1998). Both theories stress the influence of various systems (e.g., schools, health care, etc.) on the level of functioning for children and their families. Two related theories reflect the family-centered (Allen & Petr, 1998), strengths-based approach (Saleebey, 2001) of wraparound. The consistent underlying philosophy of wraparound is a change from “expert-driven” models as it places the family, not a mental health agency or the school, in the leadership role within the team process. Furthermore, the wraparound process emphasizes that services are identified and designed based on the needs of the families and youth rather than what the system has available and is experienced with providing. The ultimate goal is success for the youth within the context of their families and their home schools. These characteristics are what make wraparound a unique, family and community-based process that is often experienced as antithetical to traditional mental health treatment planning or IEP procedures (Burchard et al., 2002). The spirit of wraparound and its elements were summarized by Burns and Goldman (1999) with **10 guiding principles**: **1. Strength-based family leadership.****2. Team based.****3. Flexible funding/services.****4. Individualized.****5. Perseverance.****6. Outcome focused.****7. Community based.****8. Culturally competent.****9. Natural supports.****10. Collaborative.** **Wraparound Services Links and Successful Examples:** [|School-Based Applications][|A Community Approach][|Wraparound: Stories from the Field][|The Wraparound Process and User's Guide] media type="youtube" key="VOQEisHEPYo" height="300" width="496" align="center"

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Evaluating School-Community Partnerships Researchers suggested four areas to consider when evaluating school-community partnerships:
 * **Outcomes:**First it should be determined what relevant long-term outcomes are in need of measurement.
 * Things to consider:
 * Educational and social service outcomes
 * Process, treatment, prevention, and developmental outcomes
 * Outcomes related to services provided
 * Context for outcomes
 * Look at process outcome, intermediate outcomes,and long-term outcomes - look at the link between what is happening in program activities and your expected outcomes.
 * **Collaboration:**You should evaluate the degree and quality of collaboration. This is a critical component. Determine what aspects of collaboration should be evaluated. Inorder to increase success of your program, assess the level of involvement from families or private businesses. Baseline data of all parties involved should be taken before the program is implemented.
 * Questions to Ask:
 * Who is providing what services?
 * How well do the partnership groups work together?
 * Is there a common set of values, goals, expectations, and interests between the parties?
 * Do stakeholders have a positive or negative image of the partnership or program?[[image:population-based-intervention/Self-Assessment_Tool.jpg width="280" height="110" link="http://partnershiptool.net/"]]
 * **Sustainability:**Inorder to transition your program from experimental or temporary to a program that is sustainable consider and address the following (all need to occur inorder to sustain your program):
 * Evaluate the reciprocal relationships developed between partnering insitutions and individuals. Can these be maintained overtime?
 * What is the current state of funding? To what degree can the funding needed for the continuation of the program be sustained?
 * Evaluate how the identified process and treatment outcomes can be sustained.
 * How can partnership-based programs become a "learning organization"? The ability to do this appear important for success overtime.
 * **Design** (Table 5 ):
 * 1. Decide on an evaluation approach
 * Use a participatory approach
 * Begin early
 * Incorporate multiple methods
 * Maintain evaluation standards
 * 2. Consider comparison groups to make the case for attribution
 * 3. Build evaluation capacity
 * Maintain ongoing information exchange
 * Maintain information exchange within the evaluation/research team
 * Consider the use of evaluation coaches
 * 4. Collect data
 * Consider data collection at the onset of the project
 * Involve key stakeholders in data collection
 * Balance data requirements and data collection costs
 * Use appropriate instruments
 * Develop a data system
 * Develop a data system

__ Helpful Community Involvement/School-Community Partnership Resources __







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School-community partnerships often are referred to as collaborations. Optimally, such partnerships formally blend together resources of at least one school and sometimes a group of schools or an entire school district with resources in a given neighborhood or the larger community. The intent is to sustain such partnerships over time. The range of entities in a community are not limited to agencies and organization; they encompass people, businesses, community based organizations, postsecondary institutions, religious and civic groups, programs at parks and libraries, and any other facilities that can be used for recreation, learning, enrichment, and support. [|إسلام, islam , قرآن , علماء , مشايخ , برامج] http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/envrnmnt/famncomm/joyce1a.au [|عروض بنده, عروض العثيم , عروض التميمي , عروض الدانوب]

[|أندرويد]

 http://www.rtc.pdx.edu/PDF/pbWraparound_Family_Guide.pdf