On Social Collaboration and Communit Involvement

Howard Adelman, Linda Taylor. Fostering School, Family, and Community Involvement. The Hamilton Fish Institute on School and Community Violence & Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, 2007. 

The article is about enhancing home, community, and school collaboration as part of comprehensive safe school and school improvement planning. Schools are more effective when they are an integral part of the community. This contributes to a better academic performance, fewer discipline problems, higher staff morale, and improved use of resources. For communities, collaboration with schools can strengthen students, their families, their schools, and the community in which they live.

What Is Collaboration?

In other words, if we want a school to be a good and safe place, we must enhance family and community involvement with it. A key strategy in all this is collaboration.  Collaboration, which is defined in the article as “formal working partnerships between schools, families, and various local organizations and community representatives”, is becoming more and more popular in communities across the country.

A good approach involves bringing together resources of at least one school with local family and community resources. It is done to sustain connections over time. The range of entities involved in such collaboration is not limited to agencies and organizations; it also includes individuals, 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.

Why Is Collaboration Needed

Successful collaboration is a way to overcome barriers to learning, enhance healthy development, and strengthen families and neighborhoods. Building such collaboration requires stakeholder readiness, an enlightened vision, creative leadership, and new and multifaceted roles for professionals who work in schools and communities, as well as for family and other community members who are willing to take on leadership.

Interest in connecting families, schools, and communities is growing fast. For schools, such links are seen as a way to provide more support for schools, students, and families. For organizations, connection with schools is a way to provide better access to families and youth, creating an opportunity to reach and have an impact on hard-to-reach clients. The interest in collaboration is now even bigger because of the concern about widespread fragmentation of school and community communication. The hope is that integrated resources will have a greater impact on “at risk” factors and on promoting healthy development.