The fact the two agencies initially express a desire to work together in partnership does not mean the partnership will take shape or function well.
5 Shaping partnerships by doing the work Kathy Korum THE SAINT PAUL PARKS and Recreation Department (P&R) is a large municipal agency with more than twenty recreation centers and hundreds of full-time and even more part-time employees working to provide recreation activities that interest the young people it wants to serve. In some neighborhoods, there has long been a mismatch between local youth and available programs or services, with suboptimum service. In other neighborhoods, the skills and interests of the workers do not match the wants of local young people for particular programs and services. Grounded in a traditional approach to programming, with centralized “programmers” generally determining available activities at each site for potential participants, the agency struggles over whether and how to best serve some groups of youth. “Secret shopper” visits and field studies by University of Minnesota Youth Studies students over the past four years have revealed that many of the recreation centers are not serving many young people at all, especially teens. At the same time, there are workers at some sites in Saint Paul providing services for young people in ways that set them far apart from their colleagues. These
NEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, NO. 139, FALL 2013 © WILEY PERIODICALS, INC. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/yd.20071
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workers recognize that the purpose of their work is to make connections with youth and ultimately to provide activities and experiences that are meaningful and consequential for them. What these workers have discovered is that through partnerships with other agencies and with the youth themselves, there is potential for effective and meaningful engagement directly with young people and with others on their behalf. Partnership as an ordinary, everyday way of doing business within P&R has often been limited to working with individuals, groups, or agencies through a contract, generally to provide feebased programs or services. While these programs have produced income and met the needs and wants of some young people and families, they have neither helped P&R reach all youth nor contributed to a culture of programmatic creativity or innovation. In fact, this partnership model is based only on contracted arrangements to teach particular classes, such as creative movement for children, beginning tap or ballet, art for preschoolers, and science and computer courses, each of which cost between thirty-five and seventy dollars for three to six sessions. This approach does not encourage new ways of thinking about or working with other organizations on a common purpose or service. Venturing in a new direction or engaging in a work practice different from what is normative, that is, what organizational culture and politics allow, brings risk. To try something new may be seen as being “radical.” Nevertheless, other approaches are necessary if we are to bring innovation to our work. These must allow and foster space for joint negotiation and for ways to meet the needs and wants of both organizations and their missions, and they must focus on meeting community needs. This is what we have tried to do and now tell about what we have done, continue to do so, and how. Here I tell the story of what and how P&R thought about and proceeded to develop new partnership models. We experimented, and I give examples of what worked and why. I also present examples of partnerships that have worked less well or not at all and analyze these. Finally, I summarize lessons learned in our P&R partnership work. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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Partnerships that work The partnership between P&R and Saint Paul Public Library (SPPL) is two years old. Although it seems a natural fit, P&R and SPPL had worked independently for one hundred years as narcissistic, self-involved organizations. By design, governmental systems are meant to function independently, keeping checks and balances in place and formalizing the divisions of responsibility and authority among agencies. Although originally intended to keep any one unit of government from doing too much harm, our fragmented government also puts serious obstacles in the way of public servants who want to get things done by working across agency boundaries.1 This separation and fragmentation make collaborative work difficult, which is increasingly necessary to meet citizen wants and needs. P&R sought to work with SPPL because resources were scarce and both agencies were looking for more ways to connect young people to SPPL reading programs. P&R began by adding SPPL activities, such as storytime and magic and puppet shows at select recreation sites, during the summer, and four libraries served summer meals to youth, which P&R had been doing for more than a decade. These arrangements were made at the management level, but success was dependent on local site commitments and the relationship between a single recreation worker and a corresponding counterpart at the library. Commitments by workers in both agencies to effective communication, community outreach, and staffing each individual program were inconsistent, however. In addition, the limited ability of frontline workers and site supervisors to negotiate or commit agency resources was problematic. The result was that programs were successful at a few, but not all, sites. This partnership entered a new phase when the deputy directors of both agencies decided to collaborate and received a planning grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) for a new teen space at a soon-to-be-built communitybased facility that would house both a library and a recreation center. The focus of the partnership in this phase was on building new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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strong and sustained relationships. Trust, respect, and a sense of the self-interest of the other created the foundation for this relationship and, ultimately, the foundation for the partnership.2 Based on this relationship and others that were developed and nurtured, the bond between the two agencies was firmly established, and space for conversations was opened and sustained. In addition to our commitments to the relationship, we both agreed to be responsible for finding and assessing the physical, ideational, and dialogical spaces within which the emergent work could happen. Generally I see myself as P&R’s agent and my library colleague as the library’s agent. When we are together in our work, the agencies talk and it is no longer my work or her work; rather, it is our work. New language and new meaning in and of the work continue to evolve in both agencies and between us as actors, as does a culture that is somewhat independent of the structure, society, and culture of either: a new entity was born and develops. When workers recognize problems in old approaches and gain experience in new organizational practices and behavior, major changes are possible, and “when these changes produce positive results, cultural change usually follows.”3 That is, do the work differently and support for it will likely follow. Our joint work on serving young people has led to transformations in professional development for workers and in both agencies to strategic planning; both are leading to organizational models that are more responsive and adaptable to our changing community of patrons, clients, and kids. Two more examples of our partnership are seen in the Createch mobile computer labs and the Library After Dark program. The Createch program provides mobile technology labs at three libraries and one recreation site. SPPL leads on the program and has purchased the equipment. Young people are the workers, and they are trained by the Science Museum of Minnesota and paid through the Youth Job Corps (YJC), a youth employment program funded by the state and managed by P&R. Seen as a structure for access to digital technology for youth, the Createch programs are taught by young people to young people. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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Library After Dark, a program for teens at two library sites that begins after the branch closes for the day to the general public, started in January 2013. Teens now have a safe and free neighborhood space for social activities, including dancing, board games, and movies with friends, and increased opportunities to access technology and digital learning. The program is supported by youth workers from both P&R and SPPL and takes advantage of a community asset that would otherwise be unused. Without an agency leader supporting this collaborative work, the Library After Dark program might have existed for a short time and as a standalone partnership between two frontline workers from two municipal agencies. However, when agency leaders began their involvement, it became a program of both and hence was supported in several ways. Having the work between P&R and the SPPL led by the deputy directors of each department and supported by the department directors has proved to be important for decision making and the committing of agency resources. It has also been crucial in ensuring support and space for creative supervisors and frontline workers to try new programs and approaches to working with young people. As Mattessich, Murray-Close, and Monsey note:4 Successful collaboration groups recognize multiple layers of staff in each of the partner organizations and create mechanisms to involve them. Linking leaders may not be sufficient to sustain a major collaboration. Integrating the efforts throughout all the members’ systems builds stronger ties and increases the likelihood of success.
In our case, this new and continuing partnership has helped us and both our agencies expand programs and services for youth in ways that are meaningful to them. It has resulted in a more integrated service approach, has attracted attention from library and park systems across the country, as well as from funders, and has created positive activity in the community that is easily noticed and supported politically. A third example of success is our long-term partnership with the Youth Studies program in the University of Minnesota’s School of new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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Social Work, which has supported the professional development of our staff for about six years. In that space, we have quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, sharpened the skills of gifted youth workers and discovered the less obvious talents of others. While this development among a relatively small group of workers has challenged a system that for decades struggled to welcome and invite all young people as participants and contributors, this partnership in particular, more than any other, has helped us advance youth work in P&R and supported us in our work with colleagues in the library system. The partnership with the university has also made students available to both P&R and libraries to conduct practical field studies that have yielded data invaluable to internal discussions, program improvement and other decision making, and designing, implementing, and providing services to young people (see the third article in this volume). Our work with the University of Minnesota began after discussions with a university professor and a P&R manager. Supported by the P&R manager, the work began with university faculty and frontline P&R workers. While a few involved workers realized individual benefits from the work through weekly professional development discussions with Youth Studies faculty and students, visits to university classrooms to speak about personal and work experiences, and access to visiting youth workers from agencies across the country and across the world, it was support by agency leadership that created space for the work to continue. Otherwise there was no chance to expand what was being done and make progress on the full integration of quality youth work practices into P&R. When I became involved, first as the recreation services manager and now deputy director, this professional development for youth workers continued in partnership with the university. The group of participating workers has grown, and the work that had taken place quietly and seemingly hidden from the rest of the agency has become very visible and is now moving into other parts of the organization. In addition, the director of the Youth Studies program and I regularly consult and negotiate with one another regarding issues, progress, projects, and policy. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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Why these partnerships worked Successful partnerships that open a door and reveal possibilities to begin joint work on issues of mutual interest and concern have proven to be effective in enhancing youth services and youth work. These qualities account for the success of these dyadic agency partnerships: • Top-level leadership was committed and involved. • The partnership began with relationships, not activities or programs. • Relationships provided the foundation for the work, negotiation the mechanism for defining the work. • The work was no longer my work or their work; it became our work. • Risk taking by each was supported by both and their employers. • The new culture created as a result of the partnership was accepted by both agencies. • Each partner agency publicly recognizes its value for the other and publicly recognizes the partnership. • Each partner, in both public and political circles, acknowledges that the partnership can advance the common work more effectively than could either of the agencies individually.
Partnerships do not always work The fact that two agencies initially express a desire to work together in partnership does not always mean that the resulting partnership will function well. In Saint Paul, the culture and traditions of the Saint Paul Public School District (SPPS) have allowed some collaboration on youth work with individual teachers, coaches, athletic directors, or within specific programs such as Community Education, but overall, it has been challenging to partner with the system as a whole. This is in part due to its vast new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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and complex organizational structure, but also due (in some cases) to irreconcilable competing priorities. Similarly, our youth work efforts with the Saint Paul Police Department (SPPD) have tested all but the most determined among us. With both P&R and SPPD wanting to reduce violence in our neighborhoods, the P&R approach was to invite young people banished from recreation centers in the name of safety back into our buildings, whereas SPPD wanted to increase enforcement efforts. The completely divergent missions and approaches to the work clashed in both subtle and overt ways, creating tension between the two departments. We were confident that engaging these youth in activities that interested them, along with providing access to skilled youth workers who would be available consistently and long term as caring adults, would make a difference in how the young people saw themselves and how the community began to see them. SPPD was not quite as sure. Collaboration in small ways, most often related to a grant program specific to police agencies, was clearly worth pursuing. However, it was, and still is, difficult to integrate new ideas into this established control and enforcement-based system because P&R is a prevention system primarily. There is now enough trust with some within SPPD to advance youth work practices and improve the relationship between our respective agencies. With SPPS and SPPD, it became a search for individuals who would help us do the work. While this approach has led to some success, it is more difficult to sustain partnerships of this type because of differences in ethos, purpose, and practices, especially if the individuals have limited positional authority to commit resources or direct staff. Working with community-based agencies to serve young people can present another set of tests for a partnership model. While community-based agencies often provide specialized opportunities such as digital and media arts, graphic design, music, dance, or theater programs, it is also frequently the case that due to varying levels of time-limited grant support, the work comes and goes or the leadership comes and goes. In times of reduced funding, the landscape for community-based organizations tends to be more new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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volatile and politically different than for municipal agencies. For example, an arts organization that provides programs in one neighborhood of St. Paul has had multiple changes in leadership over the past five years. Relationship building is difficult, in fact nearly impossible, under these conditions. In addition, a portion of their funding comes through direct connections to an elected official, and this forces the partnership to continue, even though its success and effectiveness as a partnership are questionable. Ultimately much time is spent on fixing partnership problems rather than advancing the work that either partner sees as important and is really to be evaluated based on its impact on the community’s youth. In these examples, the doors to potential partnerships were opened, but multiple factors contributed to their history of limited or sporadic success: • Top-level management in the partner agencies expressed some commitment but were not directly involved. • Relationships have been developed between individual workers in each agency who want to advance the work, but these relationships generally do not include agency leaders. • Relationships between individuals in varying levels in the organization lead to less space for negotiations to define the common work. • It remains our work and their work. It is somewhat beneficial to the community but seen as owned by each and not held in common. • There is limited support for risk taking. • No new culture has been created from a partnership accepted by both agencies. • Public recognition for the other partner and for the partnership do not necessarily or consistently fit, move, and support the work. • Partners do not always acknowledge that the partnership can advance the work more effectively than can either of the agencies working alone. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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If a partnership shows the potential for significant community impact or is otherwise seen as critical to continue, all of these issues must be addressed for an authentic, sustainable, and mutually beneficial partnership.
Lessons learned These are the lessons learned that we believe are valuable to others: • Partnerships tend to develop a culture of their own that occasionally clashes with the cultures in each partner agency. This is more problematic if issues affect public safety. The higher the issue is on a moral panic scale, the more complex the partnership becomes, requiring significant work from partner agencies, often with conflicting missions. This was especially true for us in our work with the police department. As an enforcement agency, SPPD continues to be unsure about our intentions to bring street and gang-affiliated youth back into recreation centers. It remains difficult to integrate new ideas into this established, enforcement-based system. We were certain that reconnecting with these youth and inviting their participation in activities that interested them would ease neighborhood tension. Although there were individuals in both agencies who expressed a commitment to working together to address the issue of youth violence in neighborhoods, it has taken nearly six years for the agencies to use similar language to talk about how to work more effectively with certain groups of young people. • We learned that in order for any work to begin, partnerships have to be recognized as spaces of negotiation. If individual agents from the partner organizations do not have the authority, are not willing, are not skilled, or do not see the value of negotiating, joint work is difficult. When partnerships become spaces of negotiation, real work begins. The school district, for example, has decided what its partnership model will be. Their formal partnership agreement new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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is the only portal of entry for an organization that wishes to be recognized as an official partner of the district. While this makes sense for obvious managerial and legal reasons, such as trying to administer agreements with several hundred agencies, SPPS is primarily interested in partners that support academic achievement in ways it has defined. There is limited opportunity for discussion, particularly with partners skilled in youth work practices. They need to be able to convey that while their programs are grounded in something other than their take on academic rigor, these too have the possibility to foster success and learning for young people. They do this by using social skills–building activities and restoring hope through effective and successful learning that connects with the interests of the young person. Youth work practices are not (publicly) honored and valued by SPPS as an agency. It has generally limited partnership discussions with us to provide for their students’ out-of-school-time programs as part of a citywide network. We prefer to partner in the service of the whole child and youth, not only their student role. • Partnerships create new meanings in the collective work and can provide resources when work is not going so well within one’s own organization. As youth work continued to be challenged within P&R, my colleagues at SPPL helped expand opportunities for youth. The Library After Dark program, our collaborative work on the Read Brave initiative related to respect, an expanded mobile technology program for teens (Createch), and regular meetings with a group of library employees who have identified themselves as youth workers were all going on when there was limited progress on youth work in my own organization. • Partnerships created between individuals at lower positional levels in organizations require synaptic connections with leaders who can create and keep open space for the partnership to flourish and be sustained. Without these connections, organizational barriers will eventually become insurmountable for the frontline workers because of their limited control over staff schedules and agency resources. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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• Partnerships have a life cycle. It takes a lot of time and effort to create and work at sustaining them. Developing and maintaining trust, assessing the space within which you do and could work, negotiating priorities, and committing and agreeing on resources require skilled negotiation. Nurturing the relationships that support a partnership may require monthly or even weekly meetings. Partnerships need to be continually assessed and decisions about when to let a partnership go or when to close the partnership have to be made. To assess the efficacy of a partnership consider asking these questions: • Has the partnership gone beyond the two people who initially thought it important and useful? • What would the political fallout be if this partnership ended? • Who makes a difference to this partnership? • Even if the partnership seems to be struggling, does continuing it give you bargaining power within your own agency? • Is the partnership on life support? Is it brain dead? If you answered no to all but the last question, then you may want to consider making a strategic decision to close the partnership. If you answered yes to any of the first four questions, begin paying more attention to the partnership and nurturing the relationships that support it. If you answered yes to three or more of the first four questions, the partnership deserves your time and support to keep it vital, meaningful, and thriving for you, your agency, and always in the service of more effective youth services for all young people.
Conclusion Our experience has taught us that strong partnerships can be extremely gratifying for self, agency, and youth; can deliver results unattainable by either or any other partner; and always can transform partner agencies from the perspective of better youth services. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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There are, of course, difficulties with this practice. In most interagency partnerships, the potential for conflict is always present. Avoiding conflict requires attention to a number of things that may be relevant as you begin your work. Start with the notion that just as in youth work itself, a strong partnership will require a commitment to developing and nurturing relationships, and these relationships should include agency leaders. Partners bring each agency (they are its agents) and authority to commit the organization. Who is at the table and where the work is positioned matters in a partnership. Commitment at a high enough level in each of the partner organizations is important to ensure that the agency partnership begins, continues, and thrives in the service of youth, that is, beyond the individual person and each agency. Also essential is a commitment to trusting and comfortable relationships that seek common ground to support the work and the workers. This takes time and an openness to share power and an ongoing willingness and ability to negotiate. These are not common in many agencies, and certainly not in local government. Authentic partnerships benefit the collective and the individual organizations and thus the community that all serve. Finally, when working beyond the current agency culture and boundaries, there is a risk, and this means that someone has to transcend the ordinary ways of doing the work, however “radical” this may be viewed as. This takes existential courage. Someone must be willing to go beyond organizational boundaries as an internal and external “foreign affairs officer” of sorts. This is true even when partnerships are limited to collaborative work among a few individuals, as with the schools and the police department. And it is true too when working across any agency borders with the university, the library, and other agencies. Where partnerships succeed and thrive, the work eventually becomes embedded within the partner agencies and is no longer foreign to either. A partnership has become a mundane, institutionalized practice—normal, typical, and ordinary and just another way work is done here. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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Notes 1. Linden, R. M. (2002). Working across boundaries: Making collaboration work in government and nonprofit organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 2. Linden. (2002). 3. Linden. (2002). P. 226. 4. Mattessich, P. W., Murray-Close, M., & Monsey, B. R. (2001). Collaboration—What makes it work. St. Paul, MN: Fieldstone Alliance. P. 19.
kathy korum is the deputy director for the Saint Paul Parks and Recreation Department.
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5 Shaping partnerships by doing the work Kathy Korum THE SAINT PAUL PARKS and Recreation Department (P&R) is a large municipal agency with more than twenty recreation centers and hundreds of full-time and even more part-time employees working to provide recreation activities that interest the young people it wants to serve. In some neighborhoods, there has long been a mismatch between local youth and available programs or services, with suboptimum service. In other neighborhoods, the skills and interests of the workers do not match the wants of local young people for particular programs and services. Grounded in a traditional approach to programming, with centralized “programmers” generally determining available activities at each site for potential participants, the agency struggles over whether and how to best serve some groups of youth. “Secret shopper” visits and field studies by University of Minnesota Youth Studies students over the past four years have revealed that many of the recreation centers are not serving many young people at all, especially teens. At the same time, there are workers at some sites in Saint Paul providing services for young people in ways that set them far apart from their colleagues. These
NEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, NO. 139, FALL 2013 © WILEY PERIODICALS, INC. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/yd.20071
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workers recognize that the purpose of their work is to make connections with youth and ultimately to provide activities and experiences that are meaningful and consequential for them. What these workers have discovered is that through partnerships with other agencies and with the youth themselves, there is potential for effective and meaningful engagement directly with young people and with others on their behalf. Partnership as an ordinary, everyday way of doing business within P&R has often been limited to working with individuals, groups, or agencies through a contract, generally to provide feebased programs or services. While these programs have produced income and met the needs and wants of some young people and families, they have neither helped P&R reach all youth nor contributed to a culture of programmatic creativity or innovation. In fact, this partnership model is based only on contracted arrangements to teach particular classes, such as creative movement for children, beginning tap or ballet, art for preschoolers, and science and computer courses, each of which cost between thirty-five and seventy dollars for three to six sessions. This approach does not encourage new ways of thinking about or working with other organizations on a common purpose or service. Venturing in a new direction or engaging in a work practice different from what is normative, that is, what organizational culture and politics allow, brings risk. To try something new may be seen as being “radical.” Nevertheless, other approaches are necessary if we are to bring innovation to our work. These must allow and foster space for joint negotiation and for ways to meet the needs and wants of both organizations and their missions, and they must focus on meeting community needs. This is what we have tried to do and now tell about what we have done, continue to do so, and how. Here I tell the story of what and how P&R thought about and proceeded to develop new partnership models. We experimented, and I give examples of what worked and why. I also present examples of partnerships that have worked less well or not at all and analyze these. Finally, I summarize lessons learned in our P&R partnership work. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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Partnerships that work The partnership between P&R and Saint Paul Public Library (SPPL) is two years old. Although it seems a natural fit, P&R and SPPL had worked independently for one hundred years as narcissistic, self-involved organizations. By design, governmental systems are meant to function independently, keeping checks and balances in place and formalizing the divisions of responsibility and authority among agencies. Although originally intended to keep any one unit of government from doing too much harm, our fragmented government also puts serious obstacles in the way of public servants who want to get things done by working across agency boundaries.1 This separation and fragmentation make collaborative work difficult, which is increasingly necessary to meet citizen wants and needs. P&R sought to work with SPPL because resources were scarce and both agencies were looking for more ways to connect young people to SPPL reading programs. P&R began by adding SPPL activities, such as storytime and magic and puppet shows at select recreation sites, during the summer, and four libraries served summer meals to youth, which P&R had been doing for more than a decade. These arrangements were made at the management level, but success was dependent on local site commitments and the relationship between a single recreation worker and a corresponding counterpart at the library. Commitments by workers in both agencies to effective communication, community outreach, and staffing each individual program were inconsistent, however. In addition, the limited ability of frontline workers and site supervisors to negotiate or commit agency resources was problematic. The result was that programs were successful at a few, but not all, sites. This partnership entered a new phase when the deputy directors of both agencies decided to collaborate and received a planning grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) for a new teen space at a soon-to-be-built communitybased facility that would house both a library and a recreation center. The focus of the partnership in this phase was on building new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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strong and sustained relationships. Trust, respect, and a sense of the self-interest of the other created the foundation for this relationship and, ultimately, the foundation for the partnership.2 Based on this relationship and others that were developed and nurtured, the bond between the two agencies was firmly established, and space for conversations was opened and sustained. In addition to our commitments to the relationship, we both agreed to be responsible for finding and assessing the physical, ideational, and dialogical spaces within which the emergent work could happen. Generally I see myself as P&R’s agent and my library colleague as the library’s agent. When we are together in our work, the agencies talk and it is no longer my work or her work; rather, it is our work. New language and new meaning in and of the work continue to evolve in both agencies and between us as actors, as does a culture that is somewhat independent of the structure, society, and culture of either: a new entity was born and develops. When workers recognize problems in old approaches and gain experience in new organizational practices and behavior, major changes are possible, and “when these changes produce positive results, cultural change usually follows.”3 That is, do the work differently and support for it will likely follow. Our joint work on serving young people has led to transformations in professional development for workers and in both agencies to strategic planning; both are leading to organizational models that are more responsive and adaptable to our changing community of patrons, clients, and kids. Two more examples of our partnership are seen in the Createch mobile computer labs and the Library After Dark program. The Createch program provides mobile technology labs at three libraries and one recreation site. SPPL leads on the program and has purchased the equipment. Young people are the workers, and they are trained by the Science Museum of Minnesota and paid through the Youth Job Corps (YJC), a youth employment program funded by the state and managed by P&R. Seen as a structure for access to digital technology for youth, the Createch programs are taught by young people to young people. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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Library After Dark, a program for teens at two library sites that begins after the branch closes for the day to the general public, started in January 2013. Teens now have a safe and free neighborhood space for social activities, including dancing, board games, and movies with friends, and increased opportunities to access technology and digital learning. The program is supported by youth workers from both P&R and SPPL and takes advantage of a community asset that would otherwise be unused. Without an agency leader supporting this collaborative work, the Library After Dark program might have existed for a short time and as a standalone partnership between two frontline workers from two municipal agencies. However, when agency leaders began their involvement, it became a program of both and hence was supported in several ways. Having the work between P&R and the SPPL led by the deputy directors of each department and supported by the department directors has proved to be important for decision making and the committing of agency resources. It has also been crucial in ensuring support and space for creative supervisors and frontline workers to try new programs and approaches to working with young people. As Mattessich, Murray-Close, and Monsey note:4 Successful collaboration groups recognize multiple layers of staff in each of the partner organizations and create mechanisms to involve them. Linking leaders may not be sufficient to sustain a major collaboration. Integrating the efforts throughout all the members’ systems builds stronger ties and increases the likelihood of success.
In our case, this new and continuing partnership has helped us and both our agencies expand programs and services for youth in ways that are meaningful to them. It has resulted in a more integrated service approach, has attracted attention from library and park systems across the country, as well as from funders, and has created positive activity in the community that is easily noticed and supported politically. A third example of success is our long-term partnership with the Youth Studies program in the University of Minnesota’s School of new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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Social Work, which has supported the professional development of our staff for about six years. In that space, we have quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, sharpened the skills of gifted youth workers and discovered the less obvious talents of others. While this development among a relatively small group of workers has challenged a system that for decades struggled to welcome and invite all young people as participants and contributors, this partnership in particular, more than any other, has helped us advance youth work in P&R and supported us in our work with colleagues in the library system. The partnership with the university has also made students available to both P&R and libraries to conduct practical field studies that have yielded data invaluable to internal discussions, program improvement and other decision making, and designing, implementing, and providing services to young people (see the third article in this volume). Our work with the University of Minnesota began after discussions with a university professor and a P&R manager. Supported by the P&R manager, the work began with university faculty and frontline P&R workers. While a few involved workers realized individual benefits from the work through weekly professional development discussions with Youth Studies faculty and students, visits to university classrooms to speak about personal and work experiences, and access to visiting youth workers from agencies across the country and across the world, it was support by agency leadership that created space for the work to continue. Otherwise there was no chance to expand what was being done and make progress on the full integration of quality youth work practices into P&R. When I became involved, first as the recreation services manager and now deputy director, this professional development for youth workers continued in partnership with the university. The group of participating workers has grown, and the work that had taken place quietly and seemingly hidden from the rest of the agency has become very visible and is now moving into other parts of the organization. In addition, the director of the Youth Studies program and I regularly consult and negotiate with one another regarding issues, progress, projects, and policy. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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Why these partnerships worked Successful partnerships that open a door and reveal possibilities to begin joint work on issues of mutual interest and concern have proven to be effective in enhancing youth services and youth work. These qualities account for the success of these dyadic agency partnerships: • Top-level leadership was committed and involved. • The partnership began with relationships, not activities or programs. • Relationships provided the foundation for the work, negotiation the mechanism for defining the work. • The work was no longer my work or their work; it became our work. • Risk taking by each was supported by both and their employers. • The new culture created as a result of the partnership was accepted by both agencies. • Each partner agency publicly recognizes its value for the other and publicly recognizes the partnership. • Each partner, in both public and political circles, acknowledges that the partnership can advance the common work more effectively than could either of the agencies individually.
Partnerships do not always work The fact that two agencies initially express a desire to work together in partnership does not always mean that the resulting partnership will function well. In Saint Paul, the culture and traditions of the Saint Paul Public School District (SPPS) have allowed some collaboration on youth work with individual teachers, coaches, athletic directors, or within specific programs such as Community Education, but overall, it has been challenging to partner with the system as a whole. This is in part due to its vast new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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and complex organizational structure, but also due (in some cases) to irreconcilable competing priorities. Similarly, our youth work efforts with the Saint Paul Police Department (SPPD) have tested all but the most determined among us. With both P&R and SPPD wanting to reduce violence in our neighborhoods, the P&R approach was to invite young people banished from recreation centers in the name of safety back into our buildings, whereas SPPD wanted to increase enforcement efforts. The completely divergent missions and approaches to the work clashed in both subtle and overt ways, creating tension between the two departments. We were confident that engaging these youth in activities that interested them, along with providing access to skilled youth workers who would be available consistently and long term as caring adults, would make a difference in how the young people saw themselves and how the community began to see them. SPPD was not quite as sure. Collaboration in small ways, most often related to a grant program specific to police agencies, was clearly worth pursuing. However, it was, and still is, difficult to integrate new ideas into this established control and enforcement-based system because P&R is a prevention system primarily. There is now enough trust with some within SPPD to advance youth work practices and improve the relationship between our respective agencies. With SPPS and SPPD, it became a search for individuals who would help us do the work. While this approach has led to some success, it is more difficult to sustain partnerships of this type because of differences in ethos, purpose, and practices, especially if the individuals have limited positional authority to commit resources or direct staff. Working with community-based agencies to serve young people can present another set of tests for a partnership model. While community-based agencies often provide specialized opportunities such as digital and media arts, graphic design, music, dance, or theater programs, it is also frequently the case that due to varying levels of time-limited grant support, the work comes and goes or the leadership comes and goes. In times of reduced funding, the landscape for community-based organizations tends to be more new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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volatile and politically different than for municipal agencies. For example, an arts organization that provides programs in one neighborhood of St. Paul has had multiple changes in leadership over the past five years. Relationship building is difficult, in fact nearly impossible, under these conditions. In addition, a portion of their funding comes through direct connections to an elected official, and this forces the partnership to continue, even though its success and effectiveness as a partnership are questionable. Ultimately much time is spent on fixing partnership problems rather than advancing the work that either partner sees as important and is really to be evaluated based on its impact on the community’s youth. In these examples, the doors to potential partnerships were opened, but multiple factors contributed to their history of limited or sporadic success: • Top-level management in the partner agencies expressed some commitment but were not directly involved. • Relationships have been developed between individual workers in each agency who want to advance the work, but these relationships generally do not include agency leaders. • Relationships between individuals in varying levels in the organization lead to less space for negotiations to define the common work. • It remains our work and their work. It is somewhat beneficial to the community but seen as owned by each and not held in common. • There is limited support for risk taking. • No new culture has been created from a partnership accepted by both agencies. • Public recognition for the other partner and for the partnership do not necessarily or consistently fit, move, and support the work. • Partners do not always acknowledge that the partnership can advance the work more effectively than can either of the agencies working alone. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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If a partnership shows the potential for significant community impact or is otherwise seen as critical to continue, all of these issues must be addressed for an authentic, sustainable, and mutually beneficial partnership.
Lessons learned These are the lessons learned that we believe are valuable to others: • Partnerships tend to develop a culture of their own that occasionally clashes with the cultures in each partner agency. This is more problematic if issues affect public safety. The higher the issue is on a moral panic scale, the more complex the partnership becomes, requiring significant work from partner agencies, often with conflicting missions. This was especially true for us in our work with the police department. As an enforcement agency, SPPD continues to be unsure about our intentions to bring street and gang-affiliated youth back into recreation centers. It remains difficult to integrate new ideas into this established, enforcement-based system. We were certain that reconnecting with these youth and inviting their participation in activities that interested them would ease neighborhood tension. Although there were individuals in both agencies who expressed a commitment to working together to address the issue of youth violence in neighborhoods, it has taken nearly six years for the agencies to use similar language to talk about how to work more effectively with certain groups of young people. • We learned that in order for any work to begin, partnerships have to be recognized as spaces of negotiation. If individual agents from the partner organizations do not have the authority, are not willing, are not skilled, or do not see the value of negotiating, joint work is difficult. When partnerships become spaces of negotiation, real work begins. The school district, for example, has decided what its partnership model will be. Their formal partnership agreement new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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is the only portal of entry for an organization that wishes to be recognized as an official partner of the district. While this makes sense for obvious managerial and legal reasons, such as trying to administer agreements with several hundred agencies, SPPS is primarily interested in partners that support academic achievement in ways it has defined. There is limited opportunity for discussion, particularly with partners skilled in youth work practices. They need to be able to convey that while their programs are grounded in something other than their take on academic rigor, these too have the possibility to foster success and learning for young people. They do this by using social skills–building activities and restoring hope through effective and successful learning that connects with the interests of the young person. Youth work practices are not (publicly) honored and valued by SPPS as an agency. It has generally limited partnership discussions with us to provide for their students’ out-of-school-time programs as part of a citywide network. We prefer to partner in the service of the whole child and youth, not only their student role. • Partnerships create new meanings in the collective work and can provide resources when work is not going so well within one’s own organization. As youth work continued to be challenged within P&R, my colleagues at SPPL helped expand opportunities for youth. The Library After Dark program, our collaborative work on the Read Brave initiative related to respect, an expanded mobile technology program for teens (Createch), and regular meetings with a group of library employees who have identified themselves as youth workers were all going on when there was limited progress on youth work in my own organization. • Partnerships created between individuals at lower positional levels in organizations require synaptic connections with leaders who can create and keep open space for the partnership to flourish and be sustained. Without these connections, organizational barriers will eventually become insurmountable for the frontline workers because of their limited control over staff schedules and agency resources. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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• Partnerships have a life cycle. It takes a lot of time and effort to create and work at sustaining them. Developing and maintaining trust, assessing the space within which you do and could work, negotiating priorities, and committing and agreeing on resources require skilled negotiation. Nurturing the relationships that support a partnership may require monthly or even weekly meetings. Partnerships need to be continually assessed and decisions about when to let a partnership go or when to close the partnership have to be made. To assess the efficacy of a partnership consider asking these questions: • Has the partnership gone beyond the two people who initially thought it important and useful? • What would the political fallout be if this partnership ended? • Who makes a difference to this partnership? • Even if the partnership seems to be struggling, does continuing it give you bargaining power within your own agency? • Is the partnership on life support? Is it brain dead? If you answered no to all but the last question, then you may want to consider making a strategic decision to close the partnership. If you answered yes to any of the first four questions, begin paying more attention to the partnership and nurturing the relationships that support it. If you answered yes to three or more of the first four questions, the partnership deserves your time and support to keep it vital, meaningful, and thriving for you, your agency, and always in the service of more effective youth services for all young people.
Conclusion Our experience has taught us that strong partnerships can be extremely gratifying for self, agency, and youth; can deliver results unattainable by either or any other partner; and always can transform partner agencies from the perspective of better youth services. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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There are, of course, difficulties with this practice. In most interagency partnerships, the potential for conflict is always present. Avoiding conflict requires attention to a number of things that may be relevant as you begin your work. Start with the notion that just as in youth work itself, a strong partnership will require a commitment to developing and nurturing relationships, and these relationships should include agency leaders. Partners bring each agency (they are its agents) and authority to commit the organization. Who is at the table and where the work is positioned matters in a partnership. Commitment at a high enough level in each of the partner organizations is important to ensure that the agency partnership begins, continues, and thrives in the service of youth, that is, beyond the individual person and each agency. Also essential is a commitment to trusting and comfortable relationships that seek common ground to support the work and the workers. This takes time and an openness to share power and an ongoing willingness and ability to negotiate. These are not common in many agencies, and certainly not in local government. Authentic partnerships benefit the collective and the individual organizations and thus the community that all serve. Finally, when working beyond the current agency culture and boundaries, there is a risk, and this means that someone has to transcend the ordinary ways of doing the work, however “radical” this may be viewed as. This takes existential courage. Someone must be willing to go beyond organizational boundaries as an internal and external “foreign affairs officer” of sorts. This is true even when partnerships are limited to collaborative work among a few individuals, as with the schools and the police department. And it is true too when working across any agency borders with the university, the library, and other agencies. Where partnerships succeed and thrive, the work eventually becomes embedded within the partner agencies and is no longer foreign to either. A partnership has become a mundane, institutionalized practice—normal, typical, and ordinary and just another way work is done here. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd
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Notes 1. Linden, R. M. (2002). Working across boundaries: Making collaboration work in government and nonprofit organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 2. Linden. (2002). 3. Linden. (2002). P. 226. 4. Mattessich, P. W., Murray-Close, M., & Monsey, B. R. (2001). Collaboration—What makes it work. St. Paul, MN: Fieldstone Alliance. P. 19.
kathy korum is the deputy director for the Saint Paul Parks and Recreation Department.
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