Service Coordination

The Service Coordination process is described as a way to provide service and support planning through use of a team-based and thus collaborative approach. In this team-based planning process, the local Family and Children First (FCF) coordinator works closely with families and community support personnel in order to organize activities that reinforce common goals built around the idiosyncratic needs of each child and family touched by service coordination. This process places great value on the family’s perspective of what they want and need, and thus emphasizes the essential nature of having family members become equal partners in the decision-making process with regard to the development, implementation, and monitoring of their individualized plan.

Two Kinds of Service Coordination: County Mechanism and Individual Plan

There are two kinds of service coordination efforts:

• The County Service Coordination Mechanism
• The Individual Family Service Coordination Plan

Click here to download the Service Coordination Mechanism Guidance document (July 2005, Amended Substitute House Bill 66)

The County Service Coordination Mechanism is a county-specific set of procedures that guide county agencies in collaborating or otherwise “acting as a team” in their efforts to coordinate services for youth and families. In turn, the County Service Coordination Mechanism informs the Individual Family Service Coordination Plan, which is a document constructed for each and every individual family seeking services through their local Family and Children First Council.

Thus, the County Service Coordination Mechanism specifies how families must be approached by agencies in a given county when a child or family is in need of an Individual Family Service Coordination Plan. Most importantly, the County Service Coordination Mechanism helps to emphasize how the local Family and Children First Council can work to engage and connect families to all of the relevant agencies and organizations that are considered necessary in the planning process. For instance, the County Service Coordination Mechanism typically provides a delineation of steps to take in terms of how to inform and invite family members to planning meetings, as well as outlining how key stakeholders in the community who may not be part of immediate service provision per se (for instance, school systems personnel) must be kept apprised of such gatherings.

In addition, the County Service Coordination Mechanism typically indicates exactly what a family can do in order to initiate a meeting on their own, as well as how to create or modify an Individual Family Service Coordination Plan. Because each local county Family and Children First Council includes at least three family member representatives, great attention typically is paid to family “voice and choice” when the County Service Coordination Mechanism is constructed.

As noted above, the Individual Family Service Coordination Plan is based on the standards of the County Service Coordination Mechanism. Hence, each Individual Family Service Coordination Plan also pays special attention to the role that family members’ perspectives play in the planning process. In tandem, the representatives of agencies and organizations taking part in the construction of the Individual Service Coordination Plan are present at planning meetings as partners to the family, either because these individuals know about the child or the family, or they are able to offer information on services that the child and family may need. Family members and agency representatives together comprise the coordination planning team that will construct a written plan which details how the child will get services and who will pay for those services.

The Individual Family Service Coordination Plan is meant to be highly individualized and thus focused on each particular family’s specific needs. The set of services placed in the plan are based on family member input, the family’s religious and cultural beliefs, and the dynamic structure of their family makeup. Finally, a family-approved individual is appointed as the person who will ensure that the coordinating activities will be carried out sufficiently in order to assist the family in obtaining the services that they need.

Given the nature of both the County Service Coordination Mechanism and the Individual Family Service Coordination Plan, it is believed that any data collection effort on service coordination must be maximally adapted to capture information on families, their expressed wants and needs, and the individualized plan for services built in response to each family’s requirements.