THE DECKER PARTNERSHIP

As an informal partnership drawing human and financial resources from the school district, the hospital, and the university, the Decker Center has never been incorporated as a legal entity. In fact, until recently there was no formal partnership agreement at all. Current efforts to formalize agreements on finances, but not on programs, are seen as a way to create some stability while still maintaining flexibility. The partnership does, however, have memoranda of understanding with other organizations. Administrative responsibilities are shared among the three partner organizations. Barberton City Schools, for example, serves as the fiscal agent for most grants, although some go through the hospital or the university. Most of Decker's contracts come from the Department of Jobs and Family Services, though occasional grants also come from other agencies, such as the Ohio Department of Education or Summit County. Staff are working to diversify the Center's funding base.

Decker's adult education teachers are employed by the school district, and the early education teachers are employed by the university. Outreach workers, social workers, and medical staff are all hospital employees, as is Decker's director. To further the one-stop approach, some 27 other organizations, including the Akron Child Guidance Center, Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority, and Western Reserve Legal Services have accepted Decker's invitation either to set up an on-site office or to send their staff to meet with Decker clients periodically. Day-to-day operations are handled by the Administrative Team, consisting of the director, the social services coordinator, and the early childhood coordinator. These three work together to coordinate child services, parent programs, and social services.

Broad management and policy decisions are the responsibility of the Management Team, which consists of the director, the researcher/evaluator, and a representative from each partner organization. Since the three organizations do not get any direct financial benefit from their collaboration, one might wonder what motivates partner representatives to give up several hours of their time each Friday afternoon to discuss budgets, staffing, planning, and other issues related to running Decker.

"We're a public school and every public school is reflective of its community," says the Barberton City Schools representative, Peg Wiley. "We know through research that it's important to hit literacy early on and that a parent's involvement in their children's literacy activities is important." At one point, two-thirds of the area's students came from Head Start programs and, like other school districts across the country, Barberton is facing increased accountability requirements. The Decker Center's early childhood programs help children enter school ready to learn and thus provide support for early academic success.

The university representative, Carole Newman, also values Decker's services, but for different reasons. "Part of the university's mission is to serve the community but, beyond that, Decker is a living, breathing example of good childcare," she says. The university takes advantage of this by having students studying early childhood education include the Center as part of their field studies: "It gives them an opportunity to be in a diverse setting and learn that kids are kids."

Like the university, the hospital can use Decker's strengths to train future practitioners, in this case, medical students. "Decker is one of the strongest child advocacy programs there is," says hospital representative Linda Hetson. "And it provides a perfect example of how to access the medical system appropriately." All children must be completely immunized to take part in the childcare and enrichment programs, and a nurse practitioner is on site five days a week.

Even with such a high level of commitment among members of the Management Team, the collaboration can sometimes be rocky. Shrinking budgets and an ever-changing political landscape can present significant challenges. Mary Frances Ahern recounted a particularly tense Management Team meeting in which the members were trying to hammer out some difficult issues, but were succeeding only in becoming frustrated and angry. "All right," she said, "we're just getting mad at each other. This isn't going anywhere. We need to visit the babies." At Ahern's urging, the team walked down the hall to the infant room and spent some time with the infants in Decker's care that day. "It wasn't exactly smooth sailing from that point on, but it helped us come back down to earth and reminded us why we were all there."