Transformational change to address adversity and nurture resilience requires deep and sustained community collaborations. Interagency collaboration is critically important for child welfare especially during crisis situations. It is clear that when agencies focus on strengths and promote protective factors (individual, familial and community-level) in time, negative consequences of maltreatment are reduced and wellbeing outcomes are enhanced. However, limited research is available to effectively inform community organizations and collective impact initiatives about how they can strengthen interagency collaboration and collaborative practice. Furthermore, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic elevates the urgency to understand how community organizations work together to serve children and families as it threatens access to safety nets. This mixed methods study examined interagency collaboration among community organizations in a collective impact workgroup focussed on children and families involved in the child welfare system. Results revealed key strengths to collaboration (e.g., strong connections, resource sharing, resilience in staff, more vulnerable children accessing resources and more adults engaged in serving this population)as well as barriers to collaboration (e.g., group composition, funding and lack of clarity/focus). Results also revealed specific ways in which this pandemic has impacted efforts to serve children and families in child welfare. Findings highlight an approach that might assist interagency collaboratives. In
Evaluating intergenerational programs often involves measuring the extent to which programs actually strengthen both the quantity and quality of intergenerational contact, which is associated with attitudes towards aging, social connection, and anxiety about aging. However, a surprisingly limited number of reliable, valid measures of intergenerational contact exist. Available measures are either explicit to familial intergenerational contact, are environment specific (e.g. workplace intergenerational contact), or are un-validated. In our presentation we will describe progress on our team’s efforts to develop an expert-informed reliable, valid measure of intergenerational contact that can be used widely to evaluate intergenerational programs. Specifically, we will share findings from a Delphi-style expert panel review used to develop the measure. The panel – 14 intergenerational research and practice experts – iteratively reviewed the measure, offering feedback on improving its relevance and practicality. We close with examples of how the measure can be used to evaluate intergenerational programs. Part of a symposium sponsored by Intergenerational Learning, Research, and Community Engagement Interest Group.
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