The Need for Interagency Collaboration for Children with Emotional and Behavioral Disabilities and Their Families

Abstract

Children and youth with emotional and behavioral disabilities often have multiple needs that can require the simultaneous involvement of several child-serving agencies (e.g., child welfare, special education, juvenile justice, and mental health). Unfortunately, disparate definitions and eligibility criteria that are used to identify these disabilities have prevented agencies from collaborating or even communicating about the children with whom they work, resulting in a pervasive lack of coordination among service providers. During the past 15 years, however, there has been an increase in the number of multiagency, community-based programs for children and youth with emotional and behavioral disabilities, sometimes referred to as “systems of care.” In this paper, information about commonly used federal definitions of emotional and behavioral disabilities and a description of how variance in definitions and eligibility criteria contributes to the inability of agencies to work together to meet the needs of children and families are presented. Additionally, methods for developing community-level, interagency eligibility criteria for serving children who have needs that cross agency boundaries are addressed. Finally, a recently created system of care, the Dawn Project, located in Marion County, Indiana, is described.