Assessing interagency collaboration through perceptions of families

The purpose of the study reported in this article was to describe the perceptions of families about services they received from multiple health and social service agencies. The conceptual framework of the Interagency Collaboration Model was used to guide the descriptive study. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 12 families who had received services from at least 3 agencies in the year before data collection. Results of the study showed that families had an average of 5.6 services over the year before the interviews were conducted. Family incomes ranged from totally inadequate to mostly adequate. Education of the participants ranged from 6th grade to some college. Most services were health-related. Interviews revealed that agency personnel were aware of other agencies, according to families' reports. Domain similarity did not appear to be a characteristic of the agencies in this study.