Interorganizational Collaboratives for Children of Prisoners

Abstract

Almost 1.5 million children in the United States have parents who are incarcerated in prisons. These children are at-risk for juvenile delinquency, failure in school, and residential instability. Efforts to locate and provide services to these children require cooperation from a range of social institutions that historically have not worked together. This article describes two collaboratives organized to identify and address the needs of these children. One collaborative has largely succeeded, while the other did not meet all of its goals. Drawing upon models of interorganizational and interdisciplinary collaboration, this article analyzes their successes and failures and offers lessons for interorganizational collaboratives.

Key Words:

• Interorganizational collaboration
• interdisciplinary collaboration
• children of prisoners
• process evaluation