MOOSE JAW - SOUTH CENTRAL
REGIONAL INTERSECTORAL COMMITTEE

SERVICE INTEGRATION

What is Service Integration?

Service integration means that agencies serving children and families work together, rather than each operating separate, unconnected programs. Integration has several different dimensions:

• Awareness: separate agencies in a community have knowledge of each other’s services.

• Communication: agencies in the community are actively communicating and sharing information.

• Cooperation: agencies use their knowledge of other services to guide and modify their own service planning in order to avoid duplication of service and to obtain a better set of linkages between services.

• Collaboration: agencies jointly plan the offering of services to families and actively modify their own service activity based on advice and input from their mutual discussions.

• Fusion: agencies join together to offer a new, fused service which draws on the service strengths offered in the participating agencies, but do so in a form which the contributing agencies are no longer clearly and separately identifiable.

There is a role for each of these types of integration and several may be operating simultaneously in the same community at the same time.

What Facilitates Service Integration?

There is no single answer to the question, “What facilitates service integration?” Integration occurs on several different fronts at the same time. Numerous forces and actions contribute to successful integration.

Some of the factors that facilitate integration include:

• Relationships – When people from different agencies train together or sit around the same committee table, they get to know each other, and get used to working together. Trust and comfort develops. They are more likely to spontaneously call each other about issues and plan together.

• Training – Working together means learning new ways of doing things. Training like the I-Wrap training program outlines new processes in a step-by-step manner and so provides a clear roadmap for integration.

• Enabling policies – Most government agencies have policies which describe how things are to be done. Policies can either facilitate integration or create fences and walls which make integration difficult.

• A focus on broad outcomes – Integration seems to be easier when individuals and agencies can focus on results for the end-user, rather than on organizational mandates. For example, focusing on reducing the number of FAS/FAE babies, rather than on specific agency responsibilities.

• Communication – Communication is needed among agencies so that each agency is familiar with others’ mandates and services. It is needed within an organization so that managers know what’s happening at the grassroots level, and frontline workers are clear on managers’ expectations.

For successful integration, action is needed at the top, middle and grassroots level.

• Policy makers – (boards, deputy ministers) can focus on broad outcomes for children, youth, families and communities; and structure budgets so they relate to desired outcomes.

• Senior managers – can model integration, create enabling policies, and support integration through budget and program priorities.

• Middle managers – can model integration, provide opportunities for interagency training and committee work, support integration efforts, give grassroots workers feedback on their work, and celebrate successful integration efforts.

• Grassroots workers – can make a huge difference by working together formally and informally, modeling integration to their peers, and asking middle and senior managers for the support needed to work in an integrated manner.

Integration can happen spontaneously, as when frontline workers take working together for granted, or it can be required. For example, two provincial grant programs require that applicants partner with other agencies in order to be eligible for a grant.

Characteristics of Successful Community-Based Groups

Getting Started	• Information and education for potential members and community as a whole when committee is being formed • Strong support from a community development worker during first year or two of operation • A focus on action as well as on creating long-term vision and goals for the committee • A success or achievement that committee members are proud of during the committee’s first year of operation
Membership	• Membership that includes a mix of professional human service workers and local community people • Membership that includes a mix of long-term members and new members • Chairperson who is positive, cheerful and goal-focused
Operating Processes	• Broad goals that all members accept (e.g., to reduce violence in the community, to create more opportunities for seniors to participate in community life, to reduce the number of FASE/FAE babies, etc.) • Programs and projects that are tied to broad goals • A mixture of short-, medium-, and long-term goals, so that the committee experiences regular success • A focus on getting things done as well as on networking • Regular, unchanging meeting dates (e.g., second Tuesday of every month at 4:00 p.m.) • Bright, cheerful, comfortable meeting room
Ongoing Support	• Consistent technical support for tasks such as writing and typing minutes, mailing out materials, doing background research, etc.
Community Context	• Buy-in from the larger community, which means that the community is aware of and supportive of the group’s work • Professional human service workers’ supervisors enable and support their participation in community work.