Public Agency Partnerships for Disabled Students' Transition

Introduction: The Challenge of Transition for Disabled Students

Public governance is a deeply complex and layered undertaking, even in the context of local administration. Where local government agencies are concerned, the responsibilities of civil administration, legislative oversight, public service, and commercial regulation are collectively made all the more challenging by the relationship necessarily shared between local government structures and their counterparts at the state and federal level. This dynamic shapes the responsibilities and power-brokering of all public agencies, which must balance the pressures of policy, public interest, and popular demand with resource availability, organizational reach, and geographical relevance. This condition requires a strategic pursuit of effective partnerships through which public agencies with shared interests and goals can help one another further common or overlapping causes.

One area in which the demand for such partnership has perhaps never been greater is education — and particularly public education — where issues of economy and priority have consistently diminished the quality and opportunity available in our schools. In such conditions, the most deeply affected groups are those already at some disadvantage upon entering America's public education system. For students of every skill level and orientation, making the transition from education to occupation can be extremely challenging. For the disabled student, this challenge is exponentially compounded by additional obstacles. It is a responsibility of public schools, communities, and local, state, and federal governments to pursue partnerships that can help respond to this imbalance.

There are, however, issues of power, cultural orientation, and organizational structure that directly impact the success — or even the willingness — of existing public agencies to help disabled individuals receive the support necessary to make a successful transition from school to profession. Under the premise that society and community should take responsibility for helping individuals in this position, whether disabled physically, emotionally, or developmentally, this discussion examines the opportunities and pitfalls in public partnership designed to provide transitional services to the disabled.

For students with disabilities, planning for a future occupation, living circumstances, and financial management can be profoundly challenging. The transition from school into postsecondary education or the working world is a difficult step for any student. But particularly for those with physical or learning disabilities, this step will be filled with unfamiliar circumstances and the ongoing need for adjustment. For many such students, it is therefore imperative to explore and utilize those community services available to them for assistance in becoming acclimated to post-academic life. The schools must play a central part in ensuring that disabled students are made aware of the resources created to benefit them. As the forum for cultivating growth in students of all academic dispositions, the public school bears the important responsibility of preparing its pupils for the next tier, whether it be a specialized continuation of education or an integration into independent living. There are, however, a wide range of resources available to students completing their publicly funded education that are not sufficiently utilized by families, schools, or communities. Among those which can help ease the transition from primary schooling to supplemental career opportunities are "postsecondary education or vocational-technical training, adult services, job training and rehabilitation services, independent living services and others" (OCAPP, p. 2).

Purposes of Interagency Public Partnerships

There are two underlying purposes in promoting an expanded focus on public partnerships to bridge the current gap between disabled students and available services. First and foremost, such interdependency is intended to promote coordination between the various agencies that a student or family is likely to use in concert with one another. To illustrate, a student seeking community job-placement services may likewise benefit from independent living assistance. The administrative agreement between such resources should facilitate a more fluid and navigable path to utilizing available services for the transitioning student.

Accordingly, the second crucial purpose is to help students prepare for the shift into adult life by clarifying the management of occupational options, living requirements, and financial responsibilities. By bringing into close contact and interaction the various community agencies in a district or metropolitan area, we can create a blueprint for helping to initiate students into a supportive and constructive society. The crucial outcome of this is that through the proper orientation of individuals toward the options available to them, we can enable otherwise disadvantaged students to become well-acquainted with the responsibilities and realities of adulthood, while simultaneously making them aware of support systems structured directly according to their needs.

In order to bring together the many seemingly disparate strands that might constitute a planning team for meaningful interagency cooperation, partnership requires a firm foundation for bringing into closer contact the personnel who will be essential to the process. There are stakeholders at virtually every level of education, community, and business who will have a direct interest in the quality of transitional services. Indeed, all parties will be impacted by the effective administration of such a program. Given that the goals of such a program will concentrate on the unique qualities of individual students while also promoting an overall cause beneficial to educational institutions, public resource agencies, and local commercial organizations, it is necessary to foster involvement from all parties at a distinctly human level. As the primary source asserts, the quality of interagency agreements among service agencies relies on the cooperation of people in those agencies and their attitudes and spirit of innovation (OCAPP, p. 4).

This means that parents, students, special and general educators, school administrators, local business leaders, community planning coordinators, public service personnel such as police officers and elected officials, local religious leaders, university employees, and job placement and training officers must all work across agency borders in order to strengthen their mutual goals of creating a social atmosphere conducive to the careful integration of disabled students into educational and occupational circumstances aptly tailored to their needs.

Among the public partnership methods reflecting perhaps the highest potential for interagency effectiveness is the concept of governing by network. Governing by network has emerged by virtue of the increasing complexity of government agency responsibilities in the modern environment. Forces such as the growing influence of non-profit organizations, the availability of public information and media sources that instigate closer community involvement, and the integration of private and public interests have all shaped the growth of this governing approach. For parents, teachers, case workers, and the disabled individuals in question, the ability to participate in defining available public goals and resources can be absolutely invaluable. Particularly in responding to issues of power distribution that tend to undermine the input of members of the public in favor of more financially influential voices, governing by network creates a framework into which interested parties can pursue active participation.

Network Governance as a Framework for Collaboration

The primary principle from which organizational networks evolve is the necessity to invoke collective input on the best use of agency efforts and resources in order to serve the public interest. This is directly related to a second principle demonstrated in the literature: such networks have evolved from an increasing need to release government agencies from restrictive hierarchical structures and the inherent bureaucracy and corruptibility such structures tend to produce. The Graddy and Chen (2006) article points to a qualitative study approach in which an ideal model of organizational and community integration is developed and then applied to the examination of existing networked programs.

According to the primary text, the four types of public management networks are: third-party government (private delivery of public services), joined-up government (interagency service provision), digital agency (technological outlets for partnership and service provision), and consumer orientation (public service effectiveness). The five tasks that lead to effective organizational management are accountability management, legitimacy management, conflict management, management of design, and management of commitment (Milward & Provan, p. 21).

Empirical findings from the combined sources discussed here illustrate that network government tends to improve the nuance and efficiency of public services, and that the size of the network will reflect the size of the task at hand and its geographical context. Size is less a factor in impacting network efficiency than is the proper integration of agencies through compatibility preparation. In the instance of the issue upon which this paper focuses, this means defining a context for interaction that suits community leaders, parent and teacher groups, public job programs, and other outlets related to the assistance, support, and placement of transitioning disabled individuals.

The opportunity for postsecondary education should be considered a relatively high-priority transitional goal where such desire or capacity is apparent. Those individuals who have been oriented toward interagency communication within organizations suited to help a disabled student can become powerful advocates for that student's future. By bringing into the equation of transitional services the special needs personnel at local colleges and vocational institutions, the interagency agreement described here will ensure that upon the student's eventual arrival at one such institution, there will be people familiar with the student's case and prepared to accommodate their needs. These respective agency types can then help a disabled student focus on the specific career goals identified with the assistance of counselors.

Using the Strategic Planning Meeting as a method of identifying willing and helpful stakeholders in the process, the public partnership in question relies heavily on networking to both orient the community toward collective goals and to foster natural communication between agencies at a personal level. By inviting into contact such groups as decision-makers from local law organizations, leaders from public recreation programs and university personnel, as well as teacher, student, and parent groups, a public partnership over transitional services can help create the type of resource chain that will be of greatest use to the students in question.