A new report from The Urban Institute’s Assessing the New Federalism Project, Welfare Reform and Opportunities for Collaboration Between Welfare and Child Welfare Agencies, looks at what city and county agencies are doing to improve services to vulnerable children. Among the findings:

• While collaboration has been a problem with TANF in general, it is especially important to link the welfare and child welfare agencies. There is significant overlap in the clients. These clients are among the most vulnerable and high risk population.
• Kinship caregivers are one of the “overlap” populations who can most benefit from collaboration between the welfare agency and the child welfare agency. Kinship families often experience hardships caring for an additional child. Child welfare agencies are not always equipped to meet those needs, but the welfare agency may be. The welfare agency can provide financial assistance and link families to food stamps and Medicaid. Data from the National Survey of America’s Families suggest that such collaboration may be occurring.
• The report documents three types of collaborative efforts: casework practice (collaborative efforts on the front line); program development (joint efforts to create new programs and services); and organizational infrastructure (extent to which the system supports collaborative casework and programs).
• Factors that help or hinder collaborative efforts include: agency history and politics; leadership and policy direction; resource availability; information systems; co-location of workers from both agencies in a single office; staffing and workload; confidentiality; and palpable payoffs.

(You can download the report at http://newfederalism.urban.org/pdf/occa53.pdf.)