Service System Collaboration in Transition: An Empirical Exploration of Its Effects on Rehabilitation Outcomes for Students with Disabilities

The hallmark practices associated with effective school to work transition for students with disabilities include: (a) student centered planning; (b) youth empowerment; (c) individualized career/work experiences; (d) paid employment; (e) family support and participation; and (f) interagency collaboration and service coordination (National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability/Youth [NCWD/Y], 2006; National Council on Disability [NOD], 2008). While the first five practices have received significant attention in the empirical literature and moderate support in outcome studies (Test et al., 2009), interagency collaboration, widely endorsed in policy (e.g., IDEIA, 2004) and practice, has been relatively neglected in the research literature (Landmark, Ju & Zhang, 2010; Trach, 2012; U.S.GAO, 2012). Apart from a few reports (e.g., Repetto, Webb, Garvan & Washington, 2002; Johnson, Zorn, Tam, Lamontagne, & Johnson, 2003; Noonan, McCall, Zheng & Erickson, 2012), the lack of empirical exploration of the contribution of inter-agency collaboration to transition outcomes results in a dearth of information regarding its effects. As Landmark et al. (2010) stated, "collaboration is the least empirically validated of best practices in transition" (p. 171). Laws mandating transition services describe fairly prescriptive processes and services that must be available. For example, special education authorizing legislation, codified in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004, requires schools to identify transition service needs, including, if appropriate, a statement of the interagency responsibilities and linkages, as well as documentation that [they] have invited "a representative of any participating agency that is likely to be responsible for providing or paying for transition services" [34 CFR [section]300.321(b)(3)] in order to comply with statewide performance indicators. Similarly, vocational rehabilitation legislation codified in the recently enacted Workforce Innovation & Opportunity Act of 2014 (P.L. 113-128) requires state vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies to execute partnership agreements with local and state agencies, such as state and local school agencies, workforce development centers funded under the U.S. Department of Labor, post-secondary institutions and other youth and adult service provider organizations to improve youth with disabilities' access, utilization and outcomes in transition. Despite these clear directives in federal legislation mandating system level collaboration, very little is known regarding whether inter-agency collaboration is effective in improving transition outcomes from a systems perspective (Noonan et al., 2012). The purpose of this study is to explore the contributions of perceptions of inter-agency collaboration among community-level transition team members on transition outcomes for youth with disabilities within a model demonstration project administered by the Maryland State Division of Rehabilitation Services (DORS). Although service system collaboration has a long history in social and educational services, Longoria (2005) noted there is little agreement on a unified definition of the construct, and a number of different theoretical and operational definitions have been proposed in social work, social services, rehabilitation, and transition literature. For example, Povenmire-Kirk et al. (2015) define system collaboration as "a process through which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, " (p 52). In secondary school transition, Kochhar-Bryant (2008) defined collaboration as a process of participation through which organizations form together to achieve goals. In a health-related setting, Weis, Anderson, and Lasker (2002) used the phrase "partnership synergy" to describe the fundamental element of collaboration, theorizing that it is comprised of six synergy components: (1) leadership; (2) administration; (3) efficiency; (4) sharing non-financial resources; (5) partner involvement challenges; and (6) community-related challenges. …