ABSTRACT
Collaborations between schools of social work and human service organizations to meet common goals have a long tradition in social work. Schools of social work have worked in partnership with child welfare agencies around practice concerns, field instruction, policies affecting child welfare, and research for many years (Cohen & Austin, 1994; Hopkins, Mudrick, & Rudolph, 1999; Maluccio, 1997; Maluccio & Anderson, 2000; Tracy & Pine, 2000; Urwin & Haynes, 1998; Young, 1994). Successful collaborations have been developed between two or more human services agencies (Alverez & Cabbil, 2001; Gil de Gebaja, 2001; Henkin & Dee, 1998; Mulroy & Shay, 1997) and between universities and a number of community-based agencies (Powell, Dosser, Handron, McCammon, Temkin, & Kaufman, 2001). Social workers and attorneys (Maidenberg & Golick, 2001), social workers and physicians (Abramson & Mizrahi, 1996; Mizrahi & Abramson, 2000), social workers and other health care providers (Brown, Smith, Ewahlt, & Walker 1996; Christ & Somanti, 1999; Handron, Diamond, & Zlotnik, 2001; Howe, Hyer, Mellore, Lindeman, & Luptak, 2001; and Neufeld & Kniepmann, 2001) and social workers and school personnel (Caruso, 2000; Sessions, Fanolis, Corwin, & Miller, 2001) have also entered into joint endeavors. The need for continuing collaboration in all these areas has been articulated by Bronstein (2003) who views both the severity of client problems and the sensitivity to psychosocial aspects of education and health care as driving future collaborations.
