Community Collaboratives, Their History and Current Status

COMMUNITY COLLABORATIVES     Their History and Current Status

An outgrowth of the recommendations in the report: “Mental Disability Prevention in Michigan” was Coordinated Community Planning for Prevention Services. The initiative had the sanction of the Governor’s Human Services Cabinet Council in 1987.   Coordinated Community Planning was funded by the Department of Mental Health through grants to the county mental health board.  The grants underwrote a prevention coordinator and the establishment of the Human Services Coordinating Body. 

The initiative was one expression of the growing recognition that:

Various human disabilities have common causes;

Preventive strategies draw on a common based of knowledge; and

Coordinated/collaborative/holistic programming is more effective than a categorical approach to service delivery.

This approach represents a shift from vertical planning within one service system to horizontal planning across service systems.  

To implement Coordinated Community Planning in a county, the mental health director was required to convene a group of directors (mental health, public health, substance abuse, child welfare [social services], private sector) and the superintendent of the local intermediate school district.   This county-level structure was to be used for planning, coordination and development of human services.  It was also envisioned that this group would provide for increased collaborative programming, referral linkages, shared funding and mutual assignment of staff, training and consultation. This group would also provide for joint advocacy for human services.