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Question:
I am the Director of Community Partnerships with the Texas Education Agency. I will be supporting schools in Texas with developing community partnerships to improve achievement in reading and math by providing holistic and wrap around services for their students. What resources do you have that can support this effort?
Answer:

Hi Harold,
 
Thanks so much for your email. This sounds like really important work, and I'm glad that your organization is undertaking it.
 
Within the Community Tool Box, there are specific tool kits that can guide you to building successful collaborations:
http://ctb.ku.edu/en/creating-and-maintaining-partnerships
http://ctb.ku.edu/en/community-tool-box-toc/community-assessment/chapter...
​​http://ctb.ku.edu/en/community-tool-box-toc/community-assessment/chapter...
Additionally, there are a number of community psychologists and health professionals across the country who have dedicated their careers to building and sustaining collaboratives, partnerships, and coalitions. Should you choose to look into this work, a great number of scholarly publications might interest you if you search Google Scholar.
 
In terms of "wrap around services," there is a specific body of work dedicated to that framework that might help inform your approach. Portland State University in their National Wraparound Initiative does a good job of outlining wraparound work in their resource guide (https://nwi.pdx.edu/NWI-book/), but there are a lot of other states working on wraparound initiatives that pop up in a "wraparound best practices" search. SAMHSA also has some resources dedicated to wraparound services. I would encourage you to explore these so that you can guide how your organization would like to implement this in Texas.
 
 
I hope this is helpful and wish you all the best in your work with the children in Texas.
 
Be Well,
Nicole

Question Date: Tue, 12/19/2017