What is "collaboration"?

"Collaborate" by Webster's definition means "to work together."  Community partners collaborate or work together to provide early childhood services.  Collaborating and forging effective partnerships is complex and multi-dimensional. 

Partners in a community may have different goals for collaboration.  They may identify with different points on the collaboration continuum and strive to achieve various levels of collaboration. 

What is the grant project's goal for collaboration?

A major goal of the grant project is to help each community move along the continuum of collaboration towards its respective goal.  A Power Point presentation, "Taking Collaboration to the Next Level: Assessing and Enhancing Your Partnership" provides a more in-depth explanation on this topic.

How will the effectiveness of collaboration facilitation be measured?

A Community Collaboration Assessment Tool is used to help communities and partners measure three dimensions of collaboration and partnership that are important to early childhood services.  This tool was developed through a related Early Childhood Block Grant, Kansas Early Learning Collaborative, and provides a powerful, multi-dimensional assessment of a number of system-related factors. These dimensions include:

• Dimension 1: Levels of Collaboration Scale (Essentially, this is related to the structure of the collaborative, how people communicate, awareness, and decision-making, etc.)
• Dimension 2: Partnership Assessment Tool (This measures the culture of the collaborative such as beliefs, values, etc.)
• Dimension 3: Focus of Services Scale (This focuses on whether the collaborative has a comprehensive and integrated system of services and how these services are focused.)

Assessments are administered through pre- and post-process surveys.  The baseline assessment assists each community and partner in identifying the many dimensions of its collaboration and what characteristics must be present to achieve effective collaboration.  Every step along the continuum has value and helps define progress in reaching a community's goal for collaboration.

"What is the difference between coordination, cooperation, and collaboration, and why is it important as an early childhood professional to understand the difference?"