Measuring collaboration across children's behavioral health and child welfare systems

A commonly emphasized component of trauma-informed care is the practice of building cross-system collaboration (CSC). While existing research on CSC states numerous benefits and barriers associated with increasing collaboration between systems, there is limited empirical understanding on how to define and measure collaboration between county systems of care. The current study presents the psychometric evaluation of scores from the Perceptions of Overarching Cross-System Collaboration-Child Welfare and Behavioral Health Systems (POCSC-CW/BH), a 6-item self-report instrument completed by system administrative leadership and direct service providers, administered within child welfare and children's behavioral health systems in 6 California counties. Psychometric analysis demonstrated good support of internal consistency, as well as the factorial, convergent, and discriminant validity of scores produced by the tool. There was also evidence for content validity. System-level analyses showed within-county child welfare, and children's behavioral health system staff reported similar perceptions of CSC in 5 of 6 counties, whereas POCSC-CW/BH scores across counties showed variability. Exploratory results revealed CSC scores varied by staff role in each system. In general, the POCSC-CW/BH is a promising instrument that adds to a limited array of practical empirically supported measurement tools for measuring CSC between child welfare and children's behavior health systems. The study limitations and implications for CSC measurement and trauma-informed practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).