Community-based service integration: Family resource center initiatives.

Abstract

The impetus for integrated and comprehensive services delivered to families need not be the public schools or other governmental agencies. Grassroots community-based organizations may also organize to provide both a location and an administrative umbrella for the delivery of a wide range of services to children and families. An attempt to conceptualize and clarify emerging initiatives in service integration has led Marzke, Chimerine, Morrill, and Marks (1992) to describe four types of service-integration efforts at the local level: (a) community-based multiservice centers, (b) targeted programs in community settings, (c) institution-based programs in community settings, and (d) school-based programs.Marzke et al.'s classification groups local initiatives on the basis of the relative role that community-based organizations (e.g., a Free Clinic) and private and public institutions (e.g., hospitals or schools) play in the collaborative structure and on the range of available services targeting either specific populations or needs, or more general areas of concern. This chapter describes the functioning of family resource centers, a generic term we shall use for community-based service providers , but particularly community-based multiservice centers. The major advantage of family resource centers is that they empower community members to shape their own futures. Community members may organize services they perceive themselves to require, and arrange for the delivery of services in a manner with which they are comfortable.The definitions of neighborhood and community have been discussed extensively in the sociological literature and conceptualized variously, depending on the aspect of community life that is emphasized (Froland, Pancoast, Chapman, & Kimboko, 1981). There is general agreement, however, that community is a geographical entity within which neighborhoods represent distinct subunits, also defined by proximity (Garbarino & Kostelny, 1994). Within this general frame, Unger and Wandersman (1985) identified 53

Measuring the mesosystem: A survey and critique of approaches to cross setting measurement for ecological research and models of collaborative care.

“…Mesosystem research is also well suited to study the relationships between health care providers and the communities they serve as well as the strength and efficiency of referral networks and interdisciplinary collaboration. Other valuable questions include cultural influences on the formation and maintenance of various kinds of mesosystem connections (Coatsworth et al, 2002), the content of mesosystem relationships (De la Sierra, 2001), and conditions that strengthen links between indigenous and organizational settings (Romualdi & Sandoval, 1997).…”

“…Culture presents a set of particularly important contexts, and a clearer understanding of child, adolescent, and family experiences is dependent on cultural grounding. Romualdi and Sandoval (1997) emphasize the importance of identifying cultural scripts (culture-specific patterns of communication and social interaction uncovered by ethnographic research) in order to understand the cultural aspects of the informal network systems of adolescents and their families. Patterns of mesosystem findings relating to cultural variables such as race (Hirsch et al, 1990; Nash & Bowen, 1999), gender (Hirsch et al, 1990), SES (Fischer, 1977), and age cohort (Nash & Bowen, 1999) underscore the need for cultural grounding of mesosystem inquiry.…”