The power of attraction: You have to work with what you've got & remember to play to your system's strengths.

    " There are four things that I would tell new counties to do if they were just getting started," says the Juvenile Court Administrator in Stark County. "The first is to lobby for funds, secondly I would get some results from other counties and I would speak and continue to speak with other stakeholders."

    " What's the fourth thing you would do."

    " Oh, that one may be most important," he chuckled. "That one is creative shaming. We knew we didn't have everybody when we started. So we got strategic about getting the other big guys. We scheduled our meetings to occur in their offices so they would come. When we had to we ganged up with a good cop, bad cop approach. Don't get me wrong, some things we did were less successful than others. Sometimes we made the mistake of thinking people were resistant when they were just busy, but we never let up on getting everyone bought in."

    Two other administrators who had been sitting in the room sighed. "Believe me, they intentionally wore us down and we knew they were doing it. When we really got bought in was when they kept trying and they paid attention to what we wanted and needed in our systems. It's paid off for us today."

One of the major lessons learned in Stark County's development is that there is no one right time or right set of conditions within which to build this type of system. Instead, one must look at the existing system and environment in terms of what strengths already exist. This might include resources such as funding, leadership, system practices, and mandates which are in place in the external environment. How Stark County used what they already had is a lesson for other communities. There was no set of funding initiatives which would require the pooling of dollars. There was no set of System Executives who all came together on the same day and promised to work with each other differently. There was no set of system mandates which were far reaching enough to cause a total overhaul of the child serving systems.

Instead, Stark County identified what was already in place and how they could use it to begin to craft a collaborative vision and set of processes which would yield positive results for families and communities. On a local level, in 1983 the county was operating under an informal mandate from a Family Court Judge which called for an improvement of relationships between the child serving systems. Also at the local level, some System Executives were available and willing to begin to talk about their systems and outcomes for children and families. It should be noted that willingness to work together was not universal across all systems. Due to the changing environment some System Executives were quite busy dealing with their own system mandates. Rather than waiting for everyone to agree on goals, those System Executives who could make a commitment to work together moved ahead. They didn't wait until everyone was on the same page or could make the same commitment. They realized that they needed to start with those who were already bought in and build a process which could allow more people to get involved as the process continued. During the 1980s, there were state level mandates which included a call from the Governor to build a collaborative process called the Cluster as well as major reform in the Mental Health system resulting in an ultimate phase-out of children's state hospitals. (Appendix A & S) Many of these state initiatives were characterized by general language which could point a community in a direction by articulating a clear values base. (Appendix K) Stark County realized that these mandates could be used as an "altar call" to gather community systems together. These state mandates allowed the county to self define and begin to develop their own agenda within broad parameters set in the external environment.

In building on the larger environment and the local resources, Stark County realized that they needed to make use of opportunities which were, in fact, present in their community. The core group of initial leaders was able to develop a system which was based on reality for other key stakeholders in the community. System synergy grew because leaders in the community were discussing what was rather than waiting for the perfect mandate or set of conditions to arise. Stark County embarked on this journey by reviewing what resources and assets were already present in their community. By building on strengths and working with an initial, small core, the community infrastructure was able to grow and evolve over the past ten years.