Interagency relationships among rural early intervention collaboratives

Interagency collaboration is used to coordinate services and programs, pool resources, or achieve goals. This study utilizes the Interagency Collaboration Model to assess interagency relationships of Early Intervention (EI) collaboratives in three rural Ohio counties. The model includes five constructs: environmental factors (broader community environment), situational factors (organizational factors), task characteristics (project's scope and complexity), interagency processes (between agency processes), and outcomes (end products). Respondents from 42 agencies completed the 18-item Interagency Collaboration Assessment Tool (ICAT) and demographic questions. The ICAT uses a 5-point Likert-type scale to assess the five domains of the model. Respondents included public health nurses, representatives from schools, social service agencies, and hospitals. State policies were perceived as encouraging local interagency collaboration; respondents knew staff and goals of other agencies, but agencies did not share funding sources or provide similar services. Diverse specialists were needed to accomplish goals. Some information was exchanged between agencies. Interagency activities were not perceived to be well coordinated and outcomes were only moderately positive. Path analysis revealed that interagency processes were directly affected by environmental and situational factors, but not task characteristics (R2 = 0.42). Situational factors, and interagency processes predicted outcomes (R2 = 0.60). Awareness of personnel, goals and services of other agencies were key to positive interagency process and perceived outcomes.